I thought that the moment so longed for by all drivers would have arrived, but I was wrong: I had to start the year reminding passengers in the back seat of the obligation to put on their seat belts and the truth is that this situation is more everyday than many of us would like. Personally, I find it annoying to have to remember it and certain excuses still surprise me.
Within what is the passive safety of the car, the seat belt is the most useful element, even ahead of the airbags or the body's programmed deformation zones. In addition, we all want it to be the most used and that we never have to try the other two security elements.
seat belt origins
Initially developed for aeronautics, the seat belt did not reach the automobile sector until the late XNUMXs hand in hand with businessman and designer Preston Tucker and his (only) manufactured car, Tucker '48 Sedan, known as the Tucker Torpedo.
The Tucker Torpedo
This vehicle presented in 1947 had a totally futuristic design and technical solutions, such as fuel injection, and advances related to safety in the event of an accident, such as the steering box located behind the front axle or the seat belts themselves. His presentation became quite a social event although numerous failures in the demonstration vehicles and in the organization of the event itself made the act become a fiasco.
All these failures were solved before its commercial journey began. The problems with the transmission, which did not have a reverse gear, were solved by hiring the engineers responsible for Buick's Dynaflow transmission, and the original engine was replaced with a Franklin block 5.5 liters, 124 kw (169 hp) and water cooled, used in helicopters and tested for 150 hours at its maximum speed (almost 30.000 kilometers) to prove its reliability.
Detroit's Big Three Manufacturers, Chrysler, Ford and General Motors saw Tucker as a serious threat to their products. and they colluded against Preston Tucker with the “help” of the then senator from Detroit, the Republican Homer Samuel Ferguson, who was in charge of lifting all the administrative obstacles against Tucker until he was certain of his failure.
In this situation, only one prototype and fifty production units of the Tucker '48 Sedan were built. Of the fifty-one units, today 48 survive in prefect condition and its price at auction is already over a million dollars.
Ford SafeGuard Package
In the 50s, a young Robert Strange McNamara became the first president of Ford Motor Company who was not related to the founder, Henry Ford. This businessman forged at Harvard Business School and with a degree in arts from Berkeley University is best known for having been US Secretary of Defense (from 1961 to 1968) and president of the World Bank (from 1968 to 1981).
Beginning in 1955, Mr. McNamara, who was also a member of the Republican Party, was president of the Ford Motor Company, once Senator Ferguson had left his post in Detroit to take up his post first as United States Ambassador to the Philippines and then that of judge in the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and after, due to curiosities of history, the patents made by Preston Tucker disappeared, the Ford models began to offer an optional package called SafeGuard which included both the lap seat belt and the padded dashboard.
The Saab 93
El Saab 93 enters this article rather doing a bit of bobbin lace than on its own merits. The reason is that in 1957, a year after its launch, this model began to offer the two-point seat belt as optional equipment, except in the case of its sportier Gran Turismo 750 (GT750) finish, which equipped it as an element of Serie.
Volvo
For some strange reason, whenever there is talk of any security element, the Swedish brand Volvo appears. In relation to seat belts we can name the Volvo Amazon and Volvo PV444 / PV544, which in 1959 became the first vehicles to introduce three-point seat belts as standard equipment.
The Volvo PV444 / PV544 they had arrived on the market in 1944 and nothing is said about the presence or not of the seat belt. For his part, the Volvo Amazon It began to be marketed in 1956 and was equipped with a two-point seat belt, although I am not sure if it was as standard equipment or as an optional element.
As an honorary anecdote towards the Swedish brand, it can be said that the inventor of the three-point seat belt was invented and developed by his engineer Nils Bohlin, which was registered in July 1962 in the United States Patent Office and which the brand renounced its patent rights so that all manufacturers could mount three-point seat belts in their vehicles.
Technical evolution
Once the Volvo Amazon equipped the three-point seat belts we can say that the rest of the story is based on the evolution and improvement of the mechanism. That yes, leaving aside the safety belts of four, five and six points for their scarce introduction at a commercial level in the sector of passenger cars and light vehicles.
The inertial reel
The inertial reel, standardized in Europe in the seventies, allowed the seat belt to always be adjusted to the body without having to adjust it manually every time the driver changed. In addition, those of us who comb gray hair remember that this adjustment was not done very rigorously either and it was common to see the passengers in the front seats with excessively loose seat belts, which instead of reducing risks almost multiplied them.
From a safety point of view, in the event of an accident or strong deceleration, inertial reels are able to lock the seat belt to ensure that the body is well attached to the seat. From an aesthetic point of view, the inertial reels are responsible for ensuring that the seat belts are correctly positioned when not in use and are not "thrown" in any way on the seats or, as was the case in the Renault 12, "hanging" from a kind of hanger that was on the B pillar.
The inertial reel of the seat belt can lose effectiveness over time and that is something that we can easily realize if when we remove the seat belt we see that it does not pick up with the speed and/or force with which it did before and that may be due to the presence of dust in the mechanism or because pickup spring has lost tension.
Passive (automatic) seat belts
In 1972, the Volkswagen ESVW1 Experimental Safety Vehicle equipped in the front seats with a two-point seat belt located between the central base of the seat and the door frame on each side. Once the contact was made, the part that was anchored to the door frame automatically moved from the front part of rest to the rear part of the frame. It was a comfortable solution, although the abdominal area was forgotten and its aesthetic result was little more than debatable. In 1973 Volvo tried to develop an equivalent seat belt system but with a three-point design but the project did not go ahead. It was in 1975 when the Volkswagen Golf American became the first vehicle to equip this type of seat belt.
Just two years later, this restraint system received a political boost when Brock Adams, US Secretary of Transportation under Jimmy Carter, ordered that Starting in 1983, all cars marketed in the United States were equipped with a passive seat belt or airbag.. In Europe, the use of this type of seat belt was little more than anecdotal.
This measure was widely rejected by the lawyer and activist Ralph Nader, known for having edited in 1965 the book Unsafe at any speed: the dangers of modern car design, in which he criticized that most American vehicles were functionally defective in terms of passive safety, especially those manufactured by General Motors and specifically pointing to the Chevrolet Corvair, whose combination of soft suspension, rear engine and a disastrous balance of weights between axles made it little more than "fun" to drive due to its propensity to oversteer and roll over.
Another issue that influenced the abandonment of passive seat belt development was a 1978 report by the United States Department of Transportation that stated that the death rate of the passive seat belt was 78 deaths per hundred million miles compared to 2 deaths with the “normal” three-point seat belts. This led in 1981 to Drew Levis, Secretary of Transportation in the Reagan administration, annulling the mandate of his predecessor Brock Adams.
Despite this, in 1984, Elisabeth Dole, then the new Secretary of Transportation also under Ronald Reagan, proposed that Before 1990, all vehicles marketed in the United States were equipped with automatic seat belts or side airbags.. For cost reasons, manufacturers opted for the passive seat belt until 1995, when the incorporation of the side air bag was forced. After this date, only Ford Escorts / Mercury Tracers and Eagle Small Wagons were equipped with both safety systems until mid-1996.
the pretender
The first seat belt pretensioners were introduced by the German brand Audi in the XNUMXs when it developed the system ProconTen, used for the first time in the Audi 100 C3 in 1986. This mechanism of cables and pulleys took advantage of the movement of the engine blocks located longitudinally to tighten the seat belts and move the steering column away from the driver's body.
It was not a bad system and it is believed that it was the reason why the Audi brand was so late in incorporating restraint systems in the form of an airbag (airbag) compared to BMW and Mercedes-Benz. It can be said that it was more or less the same as what happened when the Volkswagen group continued to bet on its pump-injector-fed diesel engines while the rest of the brands had already standardized the high-pressure common rail fuel system. .
Seat belt with air bag
Available as an option on vehicles such as the Ford Mondeo MKV or Mercedes W222, this seat belt equips a small airbag (beltbag) in the outer rear belts to increase the protection of its occupants.
Currently it is not a very widespread system but it is expected that most brands will gradually incorporate it into their new products.
Correct seat belt placement
Placing the seat belt correctly is key to guaranteeing its function and level of protection. Remember that a badly placed seat belt not only does not protect properly but it can increase injuries resulting from an accident.
A seat belt is properly fastened if:
- The seat back is as vertical as possible to ensure passenger comfort.
- The belt strap is attached to the body already from the clavicle.
- The lower band supports the hip bones.
- The belt strap does not have creases or/or bends.
They must lend special attention pregnant women, who will use the seat belt as follows:
- The upper strap should be passed between the breasts.
- The lower strap below the abdomen.
- In the later stages of pregnancy, they may use an accessory to divert the lower strap.
Just as important as putting on the seat belt correctly is pay attention to the amount of clothes we wear. The seat belt should not be used without any type of clothing due to the burns it can cause to the skin, but wearing an excessive number of garments can cause the body to slide on the seat (underwater effect) and the upper strap to slip on clothing and cause damage to the neck. Sometimes this damage can cause various types of paralysis or even death.
Seat belt maintenance
Basically you can say that a seat belt requires no more care than treating it with love. By this I mean that it should not be pulled hard when we are going to put it on, nor should it be allowed to pick up only when we remove it. Besides, if we do the latter, it can happen that the buckle shoots out and hits the interior panel of the door or the window itself.
In case we see that the seat belt is dirty, we can pass a vacuum cleaner with a brush over it and only in the case of a punctual stain we will use water and neutral soap. We also wait for it to be completely dry before letting it wind up because if water enters the inertial reel it can deteriorate.
Seat belt use
By Law, it is determined that:
"The driver and occupants of the vehicles are obliged to use the seat belt, helmets and other protection elements and safety devices under the conditions and with the exceptions that, where appropriate, are determined by regulation.".
In addition, not wearing a seat belt is a serious offence, constituting a crime and is included in the cross-border exchange of information on traffic offenses in force in the European Union (understood in the sense of seat belts, helmets or child restraint systems).
Like any rule, in this sense there are also a series of exceptions that must be taken consider. Here is a list of cases in which it is not necessary to use the seat belt:
- All drivers when performing the maneuver of reverse or park.
- Persons provided with an exemption certificate for serious medical reasons or disability (only in town). In this case, the certificate must be presented when required by any agent of the authority responsible for traffic. In addition, the original certificate must be presented, as well as a copy officially translated according to the country in which we are. For example, if we are in Spain, the original will work, but if we go by car to Germany, it is prudent to bring an official translation into French and German.
- taxi drivers when driving in urban traffic. In addition, circulating in urban traffic or urban areas of large cities, they will be able to transport people under 135 centimeters in height without using an approved retention device as long as they occupy a rear seat.
- Merchandise distributors when they carry out successive Loading and unloading operations in places located a short distance from each other.
- The drivers and passengers of the vehicles in emergency service in urban traffic (eye, police friends).
- Driving school monitors, only in urban traffic.
And let's not dwell on it because there are no more exemptions in the use of seat belts, so you know, The first thing to do as soon as you get in the car is to put on your seat belt..