From: jimf@centerline.com (Jim Frost)
Newsgroups: rec.autos
Subject: Two articles on seat belts
Date: 12 Oct 1992 03:51:58 GMT
Organization: CenterLine Software, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: 140.239.3.202

What follows is a Globe newspaper article and an excerpt from the new
issue of Motor Trend, both of which deal with the passive restraint
laws currently in place.  Both what they say and what they don't say
are interesting.

From The Boston Sunday Globe, October 11, 1992, reprinted without
permission.  Unannotated spelling mistakes are mine.

[Begin article]

"From GM, an open-air pair for fun-in-the-sun -- but there's a dark
side"

By John R. White

The columnist has been driving an Olds Cutlass Supreme convertible,
basically a so-so car that's fun in the sun -- except for one
recurring concern.

A couple of weeks ago, it was another GM-built ragtop, a rather nice
little Pontiac Sunbird that exhibits some spunk and is fun to drive --
except for one nagging thought.

Both of these cars brought to mind the fate of Officer Jim D. Swint,
late of the Brunswick, Maine, Police Department.  Officer Swint died
Oct. 1, 1990, as a result of head injuries suffered in an automobile
accident the day before while on duty, according to the Brunswick
Times.

Officer Swint was driving a new 1990 Chevrolet Caprice police cruiser.

Officer Swint was wearing a seat belt.

Officer Swint was thrown from the car and struck his head on the
pavement.  Fatally.

His seat belt was still properly latched, investigating officers said.

How does it come to pass that a police officer wearing a seat belt is
ejected from his patrol car?  Aren't seat belts designed to keep you
in the car in an accident?  What happened?

It is fair to say that Officer Swint's injuries were the result of a
design flaw, which this columnist believes to have been the result of
a corporate decision to meet the letter of the federal
passive-restraint regulation without haveing to resort to (a) an air
bag or (b) an expensive redesign of the belt system.  And you might
add: (c) without providing any real guarantee of safety in a
collision.  You see, the seat belt Office [sic] Swint was wearing was
anchored to the door of the cruiser, not to the B pillar, that
substantial body part immediately to the rear of the driver against
which the door closes.  When Swint's cruiser slammed into a utility
pole at a speed estimated by investigators to be 32.5 miles per hour,
the door flew open and the seat belt became an ejection belt, acting
in concert with the forces generated in the collision to throw the
driver to the pavement.

The investigation by the Brunswick Police Department, according to
newspaper accounts, indicated that Swint had swerved to avoid hitting
an errant vehicle; his cruiser slid sideways, slamming the driver's
side rear door into the utility pole, causing the driver's door to pop
open.

So what has all this to do with those two convertibles?  They share
the flaw -- seat belts anchored to the doors.

The current passive-restraint regulation is the result of a compromise
between the auto industry and the federal government that avoided
forcing all the automobile companies to begin putting air bags in all
the cars back when trying to boost the manufacturing volume of air
bags that much was probably impossible.  And back when air bags hadn't
quite proved themselves so effective and become so popular.

A compromise of sorts was probably a good idea at the time, but the
compromise worked out was -- is -- a safety disaster.  The
alternatives to air bags involved automatic belts, a belt that was in
place as soon as you entered the car.  But only the shoulder belt was
required to be passive -- the lap belt became a manual belt that many
people forget.  And the motor-driven shoulder belts are such a
nuisance so much of the time that they tend to discourage a lot of
people from belting up.

A car with an air bag, however, could retain the convenient 3-point
belt, the safest combination.  Some Japanese companies offer the air
bag and the motorized belt in combination.  [So did GM's Saturn
division prior to 1993 - jim]

The motorized belts required engineering and they added cost.  GM
apparently made a decision to use the old more convenient 3-point
belt arrangement, avoid the expense of motorized mounts and simply
move the belt anchors to the door.  The inboard latch now became an
emergency latch, GM said, and, because you could leave the belt
latched and still enter and exit the car, it became a passive
restraint fulfilling the letter of the law.  but, even with reinforced
locks, doors do open in collisions.  According to Brunswick Police
Chief Donald Garadino, the striker pin for the latch on Swint's
cruiser was ripped from the B pillar.

No matter how strong the locks, the forces of collision can distort
the car body sufficiently to force the door open -- at which point the
belt is pushing against the occupant.  Toward the open door.

Convertibles, of course, have a comfort problem for belt users; there
is no B pillar in the traditional convertible.  The belt rolls over
the shoulder and is anchored below it.  Volkswagen uses a roll bar to
anchor seat belts in its convertibles, which raises the belts to the
normal anchor height.  In the Olds Cutlass, there is a roll bar behind
the front-seat passengers, but the belt is not anchored to it; GM
raises the anchor point by putting a pillar on the end of the door and
that fits neatly against the roll bar.

In the Pontiac Sunbird, the belt is anchored to a pillar that sticks
up out of the door; there is no roll bar.  But this Sunbird's standard
power door locks automatically engage a moment after one puts the car
in gear, which probably adds a modicum of safety in a collision.

The Pontiac Sunbird handling is good; the Cutlass handling, mediocre
to poor -- the steering is soft and loose, and the car is badly
affected by eneven road surface, and occasionally has a wandering
problem -- which may or may not be characteristic of this particular
sample.

The Sunbird ragtop starts at $15,345 -- add $475 destination charge
and $585 for the V-6 -- and comes with an easy-to-operate manual rag
roof.  The Cutlass Supreme convertible begins at $21,995, [and] has a
power top.

But the memory of Officer Swint makes all of this irrelevant to me,
thank you.

The passive-restraint regulation is flawed, but its intent was pure:
to give us safer cars.  To lawyer the regulation and duck the intent
on a technicality is unconscionable, in the writer's view.  Officer
Swint had no choice in the matter; he had to accept his assigned
cruiser, do his duty, take is chances.  But police are not stupid
people, and the pressure was on to avoid the Caprice -- which is
probably why new versions appeared with belts anchored to the B pillar
and [with] air bags.

But a lot of cars are still coming into the showrooms with
door-mounted belts.  Unlike the late Officer Swint, we do have a
choice, and my choice is not to drive cars with door-mounted belts.
They will put me at extreme risk in a collision, and I will no longer
accept that risk.  Automobiles that come to the Globe for evaluation
with door-mounted seat belts will be refused.  You may choose not to
buy them.

I never met Officer Jim D. Swint, but this one's for him.

[End article]

GM wasn't the only company to make such a design decision -- at least
one model year of the VW Golf had door mounted shoulder belts, and
that model year didn't have a lap-belt at all.  Further, many of the
automatic belts open as soon as the door opens regardless of vehicle
velocity, thus negating their effectiveness in many situations.  Mr.
White correctly condemns GM on this, but neglects to point the finger
at other car manufacturers which have made similar decisions.

Excerpted from "Trends" in the November, 1992 issue of Motor Trend:

[Begin excerpt]

Unfortunately, a recent NHTSA evaluation of six distinct types of
passive restraints could not come up with enough data for a
"definitive rank-ordering," but it did reveal some interesting
tidbits.  Cars equipped with automatic shoulder belts without a
disconnect feature had a 97-percent use rate, but only 29 percent of
passengers also bucked the lap belt.  Ejection rates also were
significantly lower in cars that have motorized two-point belts
without a disconnect feature than cars equipped with any other type of
passive restraint.  The survey added that having a car with airbags
really doesn't affect the manual seatbelt use rate -- 57 percent for
cars with airbags versus 56 percent for cars without airbags.  One
thing is certain, however, people are gettinginto the habit of using
their belts.  Use is up from 14 percent of drivers in 1984 to 51
percent in 1991.

[End excerpt]

Most interesting are the statistics left out: what were the fatality
and injury rates with motorized-belts compared to 3-point belts?  With
only 29 percent using the lap-belts one would expect higher overall
injury rates with the motorized belts than with the 3-point belts
given that the motorized belts are more dangerous without their
lap-belt fastened than is wearing no belts at all except in an
ejection situation.

I'm posting this because I feel it's an area of public concern.  I
believe all of the current passive-restraint systems which do not use
3-point (or better) fixed restraints are more dangerous than previous
systems, particularly for those people who are intelligent enough to
make use of their seat belts at all times.

I also believe that it's negligent of either NHTSA or Motor Trend (I'm
not sure which is responsible) to omit safety statistics regarding
injury and fatality rates amongst the different classes of restraints.
The usage statistics are interesting, and cutting down on
ejection-related injuries is good, but I want to know the overall
results.  It's my belief that the overall results would damn the
motorized and door-mounted belts.

jim frost
jimf@centerline.com
Newsgroups: rec.autos