Helen Petrauskas, 61; Ford’s Top Safety Exec Promoted Air Bags

Helen O. Petrauskas, who helped introduce air bags as standard equipment in cars and was at the center of many major controversies as Ford Motor Co.’s top safety official, died of heart disease Wednesday at St. Joseph Mercy Oakland hospital in Pontiac, Mich. She was 61.

Petrauskas, one of the first women in the top ranks of auto executives, worked for Ford for 30 years, primarily as vice president of environmental and safety engineering. She was the automaker’s first female and then-youngest vice president.

Her job put her before the public, Congress and advocates for faster adoption of safety standards. She was quoted on many safety issues, including blowouts of Firestone tires on Ford Explorers, the tendency of some vehicles to leap from park to reverse gear, Ford-made ambulances with fuel tanks that ignited, Ford vehicles that stalled unexpectedly during left turns and air bags that inflated too explosively.

Colleagues said she was a master of compromise and helped engineer an agreement between Ford and the federal government that resulted in the introduction of air bags in cars in 1990, after 20 years of pitched battle.

It wasn’t until the late 1980s -- after the Reagan administration killed air bags and a Supreme Court ruling revived them -- that a final compromise was hashed out by Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole.

“Literally, within days of Dole’s [compromise] decision, we decided passive restraints were here,” Petrauskas told The Times in 1989.

Jerry terHorst, President Ford’s press secretary who served as Ford Motor Co.’s national public affairs director from 1981 to 1991, said in an e-mail statement: “More than any other execs, Helen helped me [and others] in persuading not only Ford HQ but principally the federal government, in the early ‘80s, to provide the first 5,000 government-purchased Ford cars equipped with air bags and seat belts -- which started the ball rolling.”

Born in Lviv, Ukraine, she was 3 days old when her family fled the country in a horse-drawn wagon. The family spent three years on a farm in Austria before being allowed to immigrate to the United States.

Petrauskas grew up in Michigan and graduated from Detroit’s Wayne State University in 1966 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. She joined the Sherwin-Williams Co. as a chemist in the development of “low-emission” automotive coatings.

She received a law degree from Wayne State in 1971 and applied for a job at Ford, hoping to work in antitrust litigation. But when the company found out about her Sherwin-Williams experience, she was assigned to an important new field.

“Between the time I interviewed and the time I showed up, they decided what they really needed was lawyers who knew something about these new environmental laws,” Petrauskas told the Detroit News.

She rose quickly as the auto industry sought to cope with ever stricter anti-pollution and safety regulations. In 1983, Petrauskas became a vice president.

For most of her career, she commuted between Washington, D.C., and her Michigan home, where she enjoyed a large garden and reading history, physics and British mysteries.

In 1987, BusinessWeek named Petrauskas one of 50 “Women to Watch.”

When she retired in 2001, she told the Detroit News: “The prize goes to the loud and the pithy. To be heard, you’re forced to be louder than you want to be, and you’re forced to be more simplistic than your true belief is.”

Petrauskas is survived by her husband of 36 years, Raymond; a daughter; a brother; and a 3-week-old granddaughter.