Have Seat Belts Always Been Effective?

The seat belts equipped in our vehicles today are strong, durable, and certainly safe. They reduce the possibility of serious injury or even death by securing an occupant into their seat. The number of saved lives due to seat belt use is in the hundreds of thousands—and that is every day! However, seat belts were not always as effective as they are today. When they were first invented, their rudimentary style prevented them from being as efficient as modern seat belts.

When the first seat belt was invented, it was a simple lap belt. Because it was designed to only fit across the lap, it didn’t provide the maximum support and protection as our modern lap and shoulder belts today do.

Additionally, it is interesting to note that the first seat belts were aimed at protecting mostly men. When safety regulations were first placed on car manufacturers in the late 60s, regulators wanted to require the use of two crash test dummies—one being a 95 percentile male and the other being a 5 percentile female. This would mean only 5% of men would be larger than and 5% of women would be smaller than the crash test dummies. However, manufacturers pushed back and regulators reduced the requirement to a single crash test dummy, which ended up being a 50 percentile male.

It was even worse for pregnant women. Even though a pregnant crash test dummy was made in 1996, crash testing with it was not made government-mandated in the U.S. or in the E.U.—and that is still the case to this day! However, at least the seat belts we have today offer much more protection and security for pregnant women than the original lap safety belts did!

Even though the seat belts we have today are much more resilient and complex than those in the early days, they certainly do face problems every once in a while. Many people attest to their seat belts needing seat belt buckle repair, for example, after being involved in a car accident. Accidents sometimes cause seat belts to lock up or get blown and as a result, seat belt buckle repair is sometimes required. If you have recently been involved in an accident yourself and are in need of seat belt buckle repair, you should turn to the company Safety Restore. Rather than having to pay for complete seat belt buckle replacement, the company will repair your original ones and bring them back to factory settings!

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