Safe Speed Forums

I notice many of these looong posts are during the day. Is everyone retired accept me?

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

A lap belt in the centre rear seat was still acceptable fitment until a few years ago. There will be plenty of cars like this still on the road for some years to come. That said I still agree entirely with your main point because not many accidents will involve occupants in that seating position and it is a number that will naturally reduce with time.

Yes, the larger the sample set the more likely it is that the figures will show overall effects, and on the basis of the simple one-fifth/one-third comparison your point would appear proven. But how is the raw data acquired and processed? For a start, what determines whether an injury is classified as serious or non-serious for inclusion? Do all investigating authorities use the same standard?

None of which is relevant to the basic point that the government has no mandate for forcing somebody to do something for his own good anyway.



Precisely my point against your argument over numbers.



Almighty correlation? No. If non-belt users were 10% of vehicle occupants and represented 90% of fatalities, then I think you might be able to apply that adjective (although there would still be room for argument about other factors). I would say there is some apparent correlation.



Possibly, if the number of cases examined were large enough.



Yes, I have acknowledged that the graphs show a drop from 1982 to 1983. But given the way you are claiming that belts are so good at saving lives and serious injuries, and given the huge jump in wearing rates quoted when the law was introduced, just where is the corresponding "alimighty" drop in the injury/fatality figures?

And I repeat this question: Given that the belt law coincided with a huge campaign against drunken driving, how can you attribute any noticeable fall in the figures to belts alone anyway? And how do you account for the fact that seat belts -- if they were responsible -- were remarkably selective at saving people more during the late night/early morning than at other times?



On the latter point yes. On the former, what has really changed that much about seat belt design in the last 25 years? Pre-tensioners on some models now is about the only thing which springs to mind.



I think that's a rather broad question to answer easily. There are all sorts of things where one could argue for restriction of freedom on the grounds that a person's actions might result in harm to other, however indirectly.



I think that may have been around the changeover point to 3-point inertia belts for outboard front seats in most parts of the world. I had a '72 Pontiac in which the driver and outboard front passenger belts were in two sections -- A locking reel lap belt plus a separate manually adjustable shoulder strap which could be clipped into the lap-belt buckle if required, or just stored in a ceiling holster if not wanted. (The middle front seat was just an adjustable lap belt.)



I don't dispute that, but the seat-belt law does not make an exemption for these cases, so they should be taken into consideration.

On my daily runabout I only have lap belts in the outboard rear seats as well. That's a 1987, and still likely to be in use a good many years from now.

There are still plenty of 20+ year old British cars in daily service as cheap family transport which have no rear belts at all.

What's "plenty" as a percentage of the National fleet, would you say???

Of that "plenty" what proportion of the annual fleet's mileage do they do these days?

When you say "plenty", would that be "plenty" in the same sense as the "plenty" of accidents where the belts caused the death of the occupants who would otherwise have hopped out little the worse for their experience?

Geomety has changed significantly to improve access to the belt and buckle and wearer comfort.

Upper anchorages on front seats (and some rear) are now commonly height-adjustable - again for comfort.

Rear seats now need three-point belts for all positions in mass-produced cars.

Belts now need to be capable of restraining a standardised child seat in terms of webbing length and anchorage geometry.

Better retractor mechanisms have evloved so that they lock quicker in the right circumstances but are less likely to lock on slopes or when people try to put the belt on.


And then there were the changes brought about by the increasingly common fitment of airbags:

Pre-tensioners, you've already mentioned.

Peak load limiters are now increasingly common on at least front seat belts.

"Grabbers" are also becomming a common feature so as to limit the amount of webbing that pulls off the retractor after it has locked.

"Intelligent" belts are starting to appear - that feed information to the airbag trigger about the likely size of the wearer and enables the amount of charge to be re-calculated accordingly.


...and so on.

As they say, "every little helps" (well, if you use them, that is)!

I have no idea of the figures. All I can tell you is that around here you won't have to go far to see vehicles 20+ years old on the road in daily use for shopping, school runs, travel to work, etc. Maybe it's different in richer parts of the country.

Point taken about some of the other changes in belt designs, but that doesn't alter the basic point that the law mandating use still applies to all fitted belts, whether the latest all-singing, all-dancing model or a 1960s lap belt.

Lol is he still trying to push this daft idea?

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