My understanding at the time was that for a few years during the late 80's/early 90's federal mandates stated that airbags weren't required in vehicles with automatic seatbelts. So many manufacturers used them as they were the cheaper alternative, but they pretty much disappeared in the mid 90's once airbags became federally mandated in all vehicles. (U.S.)
Also another small point: these "Automatic" seatbelts actually solved no problem. You still had a lap belt that had to be manually attached, using almost the exact same amount of effort, and motions, as a manual three-point seatbelt required. I remember there being warnings in my '86 Escort manual that indicated that the automatic seatbelt was actually MORE dangerous without the lap belt. I suspect that this is another major factor in their disappearance...
You're missing another, and albeit more important, reason why they were phased out. It still required the use of a manual lap belt. There were many studies and accident investigations which concluded that many drivers were only using the automatic seatbelt and neglected to use the lap belt, which obviously negated a major aspect of the seatbelt.
Aaron you have hit on the problem of all vehicle safety - what do you leave to the customer to do and what do you automate. It's true with vehicle speed, cleaning your windshield after a snow storm, driving after working too long (tired), drinking too much (no, not "I really have to find a bathroom", the other drinking) and many more. You have correctly pointed out a very important issue, albeit one that does not lend itself to a RUclips video. Shooting Cars - I like your work.
I think a lot more people would have used the lap belt if there was an active warning of some kind like they have now with the light and the beeper. I had 4 different cars with automatic seatbelts and they all had a seatbelt light and beeper that shut off as soon as the shoulder belt was over you and locked in. If you tried to drive with the shoulder belt unhooked it would beep and the light would stay on. Drove me crazy when my mom would ride with me because she would always unhook the shoulder strap when she got in and the light would be on the whole time. The system did not care at all about the lap belt being buckled, so it was just one more reason it seemed like it was unnecessary to wear. If any of my cars would have had that same thing for the lap belt, I would have been reminded that I needed that and just put it on. Granted, I'm sure plenty of people would have done like they do now and just buckle it behind them, but I'm certain there is a large number of people who would have used their lap belts if the car nagged at them to wear it. Nowadays I can't drive my Kia across a parking lot without losing my sanity, so now I buckle up anytime the car moves anywhere to keep the beeper happy. Just a poorly thought out design is what it boils down to, the bare minimum to satisfy a requirement and nothing more which unfortunately killed some people.
Being a kid growing up in the 80s and sitting in several different cars with automatic seatbelts I really have to say I absolutely hated Automatic seatbelts I got hung up in them constantly lol
When I was a kid in the seventies, and a teenager in the eighties, _nobody_ I knew wore seatbelts -- except me. They should have. When I was a kid, I had been in an accident where we got rear-ended while stopped in a traffic jam. It was a five-car pileup, and we were in the car that the one causing accident crashed into, so we got it worst of all. I had been asleep in the backseat, and woke up to find myself bouncing like a pinball back and forth between the front and rear seats, but at least I came out of it without a scratch. My grandparents weren't so lucky. My grandmother had a broken arm and broken nose from hitting the dashboard, but Grandad, though he had no broken bones, got it much worse. When the dust settled, you could see strands of his hair hanging out of a star his head had made in the windshield. He lived many more years, but years later said that he never really felt good again after that accident, and years later, he had a series of strokes that incapacitated him during the last decade of his life, and I do wonder if the head trauma was a contributing factor. Maybe not, but still... Anyway, from the time I started driving at sixteen, I always remembered that accident, and always wore my seat belt.
@@alton791 Oh I was _far_ from relaxed in that accident, once I was jerked awake by the first impact. Then I instinctively curled tightly into a fetal position, and as I said, just bounced back and forth several times between the front and back seats. I was always amazed I had no cuts and scrapes, because the back seat was covered in the hundreds of fragments of the shattered rear window. Thank God auto glass shatters into tiny pebble-size fragments, rather than long, dagger-like shards. But while the lack of scratches from all the still-rough edged glass fragments seems slightly miraculous to me, my lack of broken bones or other major injuries is really more attributable to the fact that I kept hitting the rear of the front seats, and the front of the rear seat back -- both soft, heavily padded surfaces -- rather than my being "relaxed."
When I turned 16 in 1978, I got my grandfather's 1970 Buick Electra to drive. I had seen the seat belt videos in driver's ed and knew it made sense to wear them but I didn't at first. However after about a week of seeing "Fasten Seat Belts" printed above the steering column, I decided to put the belts on- those were the old style separate lap and shoulder belts. I was amazed how much better the car drove and handled with the belts on and that is what really got me in the habit of wearing them in addition to the safety aspect. All of my friends thought I was nuts for buckling up and usually I was the only one in the car wearing a belt. Fast forward to 1982 and coming home from college one weekend. A drunk driver in a Chevy Suburban hit me head on. I walked away with only bruises from the belts which was far better than the unbuckled drunk driver.
@@alton791 Why some* drunk drivers have less injuries. Not tensing is defly good, but there's still tons that get horribly hurt. There's a lot of other factors too, like it's usually the drunk's car hitting someone else, so they get more benefit from their seat belts, airbags, and are generally in a better position to absorb the forces, where if it's something like the side of the other car, they're incredibly disadvantaged.
I argue that they were also really impractical as the passenger still needed to buckle the lap belt. With the standard 3 point, it was one motion that engaged the lap belt and shoulder belt.
Very popular with older people when I was a kid. Not everyone can reach an item at shoulder height within the confines of a car. The lap belt is easier to reach for people with lower mobility.
you have to realize who these were marketed to. people who would always forget to buckle their seatbelt because for decades they drove without one and it wasn't a problem until they started writing you $100 tickets for not wearing it. back in the 80s $100 meant a lot more than it does today.
I found this funnily sneaky, forcing people to wear seatbelts by putting them on for them. I suppose many people unclipped the seatbelt and stuffed it between the seat. Carmakers, always looking for the cheap and easy way, found automatic belts to be easier than airbags. Once airbags became mandatory there was no reason/need to install automatic belts. You also should have mentioned that the lap belt still had to be manually fastened. The shoulder belt alone is not enough to prevent injury in a crash and can be worse than a lap belt alone.
It seems that a lot of Japanese automobiles in the 1980's always lagged on safety devices until forced by government mandates for airbags. One of the reasons why I have always owned German automobiles. Anyone old enough to remember the early 1970's when some American cars would not start unless the seatbelt was buckled?
@@kennixox262 I didn't realize they had cars that wouldn't start without the seatbelt buckled. My Ford ('77) has a buzzer that goes off for eight seconds after you start the car if your belt is not buckled first. My Cadillac ('73) and Plymouth ('72) actually both have occupancy sensors for the front passenger seats, so if you set something heavy enough in the seat, the FASTEN SEATBELTS buzzer and light come on because the car thinks an unbuckled passenger is in the seat. Needless to say, all three cars quickly had their buzzers disconnected. I always wear my seatbelt and make my passengers do so as well, so the buzzers were just an unnecessary nuisance in my case.
@@NoName-ik2du I believe around 1972, that was the model year my mom purchased a Cadillac Fleetwood and can remember that she was quite annoyed by that. Was rather young myself, about 10 or so but to recall that. The car was a POS and that quickly went away for a Mercedes.
@@TheKitMurkit If you didn't fasten the lap belt it wasn't a 3 point belt, only a 2 point shoulder harness in that state. And I recall hearing an urban legend about how if you didn't have the lab belt fastened with those 2 point shoulder harnesses, you could risk slicing your neck on the shoulder belt in a sudden crash without the lap belt to aid in holding you in place. Not entirely sure how true it is but running the edge of those old belts across some exposed skin sure could be painful if you did it hard enough 😬
I'm probably one of the few people that actually loved this feature, just for the convenience of not having to buckle and unbuckle! Which therein lies the biggest problem with these that you didn't mention - almost no one used the separate lap belt that you had to put on yourself, and a lot of us didn't realize just how dangerous it was if you didn't wear it. For all the years I had cars with these I always felt safe with just the shoulder part around me so I never ever bothered with putting on the lap belt, the thought that I needed to wear it never crossed my mind. Everyone had these seatbelts in the 90's, and that was how you used them- you got in, the shoulder strap went around and you drove off. So handy! In 2011 I was cruising down the highway in my 1993 Eclipse that I dearly loved, a car pulled out in front of me and I T-boned it going like 60. I ended up with a broken collarbone, a collapsed lung, a broken ankle, a massive bruise across my chest, and a big gash in my neck. At the ER the doctor asked me if I was in a car with automatic seatbelts and didn't have the lap belt fastened because if so they needed to do further checks. Apparently some people got their livers and kidney slashed by the shoulder belt and bled internally from it without even knowing. Fortunately I did not have those injuries. After I recovered I started doing some reading about this and there were a lot of people who died or were seriously maimed from these, all for the same reason-they weren't wearing the lap belt. Car companies even got sued for putting this system in because it made people feel safe when they weren't. Had any of my cars had some kind on warning on them like "you can be decapitated without the lap belt on" or "you'll fly out the door if it opens in a crash" I probably would have thought twice about the importance of the lap belt and actually used it. Which would have negated the whole reason I liked them in the first place, not having to put my own seatbelt on! So yeah, if you still have one of these cars then don't be like me and wear your dang lap belt, it is important even if it feels unnecessary.
I remember when the fed gov drafted legislation for cars to have automatic seat belts. Because it ensured all drivers at least had the cross belt on. Then safety reports proving it didn’t really help because the lap belt wasn’t used. You needed both to be effective. They dumped the bill.
I was in a serious accident in the 80s, when we didn't wear seatbelts, and I'm not even sure if our cars had them when I was a kid. It was a miracle we survived, but I am still affected by the head injury I sustained to this day. I always made sure to wear one after that.
@@TheRealDrJoey That doesn't surprise me. Having both belts spreads the force across a greater portion of the spine, and reduces the damage to any particular part. A harness would arguably be even better, but there are practical reasons why it isn't typically used in cars.
You forgot to mention one very important reason for their failures. The autoomated process only did the shoulder strap, you had to manually do the lap belt. Many who didn't got injured when they slid off the seat.
Agreed. "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help" are the scariest words that come to mind here. Myself born in '89 I've seen a handful of these cars, never sat in one thankfully, the only type of auto seat belts I've used, were in my uncle Frank's 1990 Cadillac Brougham. The seat belts were mounted in the door, the buckle was intended for emergency use only of course everyone treated them as manual belts, so I wouldn't call them automatic belts per se. In addition if the door flew open during a crash you're coming out with it. When I was a kid even I thought that was weird. Both versions of automatic belts should never have been allowed to exist, if you really wanna know the truth. They were potentially less effective than manual belts and provided a false sense of security.
@@Sparky-ww5re In the mid 70s as a teenager I had my grandfather's 1970 Buick Electra. I was that rare teenager that buckled up both the lap and shoulder belts. In the Electra the lap and shoulder belts were 2 completely separate belts with each having it's own buckle. The lap belt had a smaller buckle and a retracter for the male ene. The shoulder belt however didn't have a retracter and had to be manually adjusted- you left enough space between your chest and the belt. When properly adjusted those belts really felt secure. As a teenage smoker with the shoulder belt on it was a bit confining especially when reaching for the cigarette lighter and ashtray, but I persevered. All of my friends thought I was nuts for buckling up the lap and shoulder belts and I was usually the only one in the car with the belts buckled. A couple of years later a drunk driver in a Chevrolet suburban crossed the center line and hit me head on. Because of the size of the car and the fact that I was wearing both belts, I walked away with only bruises from the belts which was far better than the unbelted other driver. The myth that older cars were unsafe, and yes they didn't have the safety features of today's cars, was that very, very people wore seat belts. Usually the people who did, only wore the lap belt and that only offered protection for the lower body. The "confining" shoulder belts in combination with the lap belts offered very good protection as I am living proof of. The drunk driver that hit me was wearing a 3 point seat belt with the shoulder belt under his left arm, basically a 3 point lap belt. He had massive facial and chest injuries from the steering wheel and his unbelted passenger went through the windshield and landed on the hood with severe injuries. No seat belt, a lap belt only and an early 3 point seat belt, which I was wearing. I was the only one who walked away from that head on collision.
@@bradparris99 exactly what you said, belt means you get to live another day, had a few high speed accidents in my life and in each and every single one of them i got out by myself, before anyone stopped to help
@@wittekPL You buy insurance for your car for when it is in a collision. Properly wearing lap and shoulder belts is insurance for the driver and passengers. Most of the time "insurance" takes care of the damage and sadly sometimes not, but you are better off having anything possible to stack the odds in your favor. Even as a teenager, it was a no brainer to buckle up.
@@bradparris99 where i live insurance is mandatory. If you don't pay it you will automatically receive a heavy fine, plus more time you will delay with payment it will stack to a pretty crazy sum.
I had forgotten about them. Many people hated wearing a seatbelt, but most people just forgot. I remember having to remind my parents to put on their seatbelts. Even in their old age, they would pull out of the driveway and start putting on their seatbelt as they were driving. Then my mom got into the habit of taking it off a block away from the house. I wondered about that. It's like she was preparing to dive out of the car.
Seat-belts weren't required to be used until sometime in the mid-80s depending upon where you lived. The first law in the US was in NY and it took effect in 1984. I remember going with my dad to a junkyard to get a seatbelt to install in the backseat of the car, so that there would be a lapbelt for the kids sitting there.I knew a kid that literally fell out of a car going around a turn because the door popped open and he wasn't wearing a seatbelt. Some people are set in their ways or honestly believe that after all the years they've been driving without needing the belt that they won't need it in the future. I've only been in one car crash and the belt didn't do anything. I was hit from behind at low speed and the seat alone would have been sufficient. But, I still buckle up because who knows if I'll be as lucky the next time.
My MIL got into a really bad accident as a passenger when she was 17. It effed up her neck pretty badly. The scar from the surgery to fix it is huge. They (my in-laws) used to have to drive down a small hill of a driveway to get into the parking lot of their old apartment. At the bottom of the hill, it quickly veered to the right, and you couldn't see around the corner because there were trees and bushes. It was mind-boggling to me that as soon as she pulled off the road and into that descending driveway, she'd fcking unbuckle her seat belt. Every time. And more than once, someone would be tearing around that corner like a bat out of hell to go UP the driveway.
My '94 Saturn has both automatic belts and a driver's side airbag. The sun visors are getting pretty chewed up because the seatbelt carriage can get stuck on them if the visors are swung over to the side when you open the door. This is my third car with automatic belts and the first one on which I've noticed this issue. A few years ago I got a letter from Mazda about an ignition switch recall on a '91 323 I used to have. I have to say I was impressed how old of a car they would recall, though by that point the 323 had already succumbed to other issues.
I remember the whole automatic seatbelt thing. I never owned a vehicle with them. I have been a habitual user of seat belts since the day that my family was involved in a real bloody car accident when I was 10. Our car was old enough that it wasn’t equipped with seat belts. My father picked me up from the hospital with our other car that had them and since that moment I have ALWAYS buckled my belt.
Right, why did we only consider the front occupants in the law? Children and adults can climb around all inside the back of the vehicle, but front seaters will be PENALIZED.
@@tynewlin because people falsely believe the back is safe without a seatbelt. It’s not and in fact it might be worse because rear passengers can crush front passengers if they don’t have a seatbelt
Yup, I've been in a rollover crash before, and my seat belt was the only thing keeping me from falling to the ceiling-floor. I had been in other, less serious accidents before that were enough to get me in the habit before that day. I have never forgotten my belt since.
attaboy! my wife had a big issue with using her. luckily alot of newer cars will chime until you use them, her new 2015 Focus does this. She would always cite the 'I'll burn alive in the car because I cant get the belt off!'. I had to sit her down and show her the statistics that its much more likely you'll bust your head open on the windshield before a car burst into flames and be trapped in it.
@@longbow6416 You should send her to me. I worked 44 years in the automotive industry, the last 24 in collision repair. I saw people who were properly restrained walking away from some pretty nasty stuff. I would get whiners that complained about an abrasion from an airbag. I would always remember my brother and his friend who both went through the windshield and back in again in our 1960 Falcon with no seat belts and a metal dashboard. My brothers friend had 125 stitches in his face and had to have plastic surgery. My brother had 72 stitches and was picking glass fragments out of his head for two years. I’ll take a seat belt any day.
Automatic seatbelts never caught on in the UK, thankfully. Inertial reel seatbelts were becoming the norm in Europe around that time. I think automatic seatbelts were all static. Inertial reel belts are just so much better so perhaps this hastened the demise of the automatic variety.
I had a teacher who had been in an accident, the door opened while it was rolling and the seatbelt dutifully came off causing his head to get smashed. Was incredible that he survived it and still managed to be a teacher.
I’m surprised you didn’t include a few clips of automatic seatbelt fails as well-many of them pretty funny. Basically, if you arrive at your friends house and are so excited to see them that you’re sticking your head out the window talking to them AS YOU PULL THE DOOR HANDLE, then you could get your neck trapped in the mechanism. Both terrifying and hilarious at the same time.
I thought for sure that would have been mentioned in the video b/c I know so many people that it happened to. Glad you brought it. Brings back some laughs.
They seemed cool at first, then became annoying. Ended up getting a lot of people killed because not many knew about the lap belt, and if you do not hook up the lap belt the automatic belt became a noose.
I still remember going USA and everyone was still using mobile phones while driving when it was already illegal in Europe 🤣. Even at the petrol pumps the Americans had the phones out
@@sko1beer I remember visiting Europe in the 90s and they were still using LEADED fuel even though it had been outlawed in the US for about 20 yrs at the time!
@@fazolen the USA leaded gasoline began phasing out in around 1974, and wasn't completely done with until 1996. Throughout the 80s the lead content was reduced significantly. My first vehicle, 1993 Ford Ranger said unleaded fuel only at the filler and near the fuel guage on the dash to warn the driver not to use leaded fuel where it's available, because it would quickly damage the catalytic converter and maybe other parts of the truck. On the other hand old engines from pre-1970 could be damaged when ran on unleaded fuel because tetraethyllead acted as an internal lubricant for the valves in addition to an octane booster
I still remember getting a ride in my friend's mom's car several times in the late '90s and her car had these! They were so COOL! I wish they were still around.....
They had these in the 90's. I had a 93 and a 94 sentra that had these seat belts. I found out they worked when I hit a tree. I always assumed they would just break, especially at the speed I hit that tree. But they help.... Bruised the eff outta my sternum but saved my life.
Mind you, this was an exclusively American thing and I'm sitting here with friends from across Europe and no one's ever even just heard of an automatic seatbelt Crazy stuff Bless Murica what would we do without you
I have a 1987 Camry with automatic seat belts. They still work, and the only issue I’ve had with them was actually a wiring problem in the door. There is a switch inside the door latch that enables the shoulder belt when the door is closed. The wiring that runs to this switch eventually breaks at the door hinge from years of opening and closing the door. I replaced the wiring and it’s good as new. They’re a very niche feature that, much like burgundy velour interiors, will likely never return.
I know someone who was decapitated by one back in the 90s. He was in a car crash and I’m assuming the door was ripped off. My family and I have been avid about educating everyone we know about the danger. Please reconsider wearing it.
@@shanester366 they can decapitate top you if you’re in a wreck. I knew someone who died in the 90s after being in a car wreck with one. Please don’t wear it.
@@larsonfamilyhouse that's crazy sorry to hear that. Luckily that car is not my daily driver, it pretty much only puts around the neighborhood these days I drive something much more modern as my daily.
I have automatic seatbelts in my 92 svx that still work. I love them so much. They confuse people that have never heard of them but are really convenient. I wish they stayed around for longer. The only issue is occasionally you hit your head on the sliding mechanism and it really hurts
@@SVXtasy_ Maybe unplug the trigger switch or power to the motor that way part doesn’t burn itself out? If you want it again later clean and grease the track and plug it back in. By the way cool car!
I have them in my 92 svx also and my 94 turbo legacy. I had to get a track at the junkyard to repair the driver side in the legacy that was seized. Easy repair and totally worth it. They are so cool I think. I never want to convert them to manual belts
The SVX can be such an amazing car with custom mods like a Manual trans and STI drive train. It's a ton of work from what I hear, but the SVX looks really cool and worth the money and effort IMO.
Born in 89 I remember riding in two cars having automatic seat belts. The first was my neighbor's 1989 Honda Accord. Though the seat belts were very strange. My uncle owned a 1990 Cadillac Brougham, seat belts in the door. Never seen any other car with very weird seat belts. But I really liked the gas cap behind the license plate also the only car I've seen like that, but if there was a line at the gas station it didn't matter which side opened up first. The ability to fill from either side was pretty cool.
Yeh I had a job pumping gas at my local gas station when I was 15 & the first time I had a car come in with the gas cap behind the license plate I was thrown!🤣💯👍
So the seatbelt in the door was GM's alternative to the automatic seat belt. The seatbelts in the door was designed to stay buckled and you just kind of climed in around it lmao
If there’s a line at the gas station an im in my miata i take whatever’s shortest, because the gas flap is sitting near horizontal on the trunk its super easy to fill up from the wrong side
The large 1990 (that year only) G. M. models (and also probably some of their small early to mid 90s cars) had that poor seat belt system that could throw someone out of the car if the door opened. That's G.M. Law Loophole Engineering for you.
My final assignment for my french class back in high school was regarding safety regulations in cars, so, while that was about half a decade ago, I didn't expect to really learn anything, just to be refreshed on what I already knew, but I was pleasantly surprised! This was a really informative and enjoyable video, keep it up!
Yep! Air bags were mandated to protect those too stupid to wear seat belts. So now we all get to ride around with little bombs in front of our faces, and manufacturers get to issue about a zillion recalls to try to stem the tide of airbag-caused deaths.
My first car was a 1993 Ford Escort and it had good, working automated seatbelts. It wasn't until a little while after I owned the car that I realized there was actually a lap belt that you still had to attach manually. The retaining loop that's supposed to keep it against the side of the seat was broken so I never even noticed the belt was there until I spotted the latch on the other side. Everyone thought the seatbelt mechanism was so cool in my car, but then one day my best friend drove my car and for some reason, in his care, it broke on the drivers side. The belt would only go so far up the track and then proceed to make loud clicking noises for the rest of the trip. The passenger side kept working just fine, but I eventually had to go in and manually reel the seatbelt all the way to the latched position and disconnect the electrical connector which also disconnected the driver door chime and dome light activation. Luckily you can just disconnect it at the shoulder so that's what I did for the remainder of time I owned the car.
@@jimmbobb Maybe, he wasn’t the most mechanically conscious person… and he was a bigger guy so no telling what he did or didn’t pay attention to when getting in and out of the car. Perhaps blocked the path while it was moving and it broke like that? I don’t know…
@@man_on_wheelz Granny had a 1987 Escort (the first year they used the auto belts). My cousin and I, both about 8 years old, were left in the car while my aunt ran into a friend's house. We opened and shut the door several times, holding the belt back and stopping it. Until it finally stopped working. My aunt was SO PISSED! She yelled and cussed at us the whole way home, the seatbelt about a quarter of the way from the "back" position so she couldn't sit properly. After a while of playing possum it started working again, thankfully.
My first car, a 1995 Plymouth Acclaim, had an automatic seat belt for the driver only. Always wondered why you didn’t see more of them. It was neat, if ultimately useless. Great video!
Interesting. Was yours a Canadian model? Chrysler introduced air bags pretty early on in the U.S. market, and my dad's Acclaim from 1991 or 1992 had a driver air bag.
When I was kid, my dads 89 Thunderbird SC had auto seatbelts. To be honest, they are the reason why i where seatbelts. I feel weird without them. But that feature in particular, just felt like the car was hugging you, telling you its going to keep you safe, while you are out on a fun saturday drive with dad. Such Nostalgia seeing this video.
My mom had a 92 Nissan Stanza with power belts when I was growing up. I remember them being super-annoying - not because I didn't want to buckle up, but because they were always -ALWAYS - in the way. They could block your view or reach to controls when in the retracted position, you had to wait for them to retract upon leaving the car, and most annoyingly they weren't height-adjustable so that if you weren't just the right height, they were uncomfortable while driving. We never had trouble with the motors, though, and we drove that car into the ground. I wasn't sad to see that feature go, though you could say that the motorized belt extenders used in some luxury coupes and convertibles are its spiritual successor.
"Anything motorized will break." This is what I keep grumbling quietly to myself whenever I see a new electric car full of "hey look what I can do" features. Falcon wing doors, anyone? I've always thought it was amusing that even though the car tries to garrote you every time you get in, you still have to manually fasten the lap belt. My favorite work-around was the door-mounted seatbelt that you're supposed to leave fastened and slide in beneath every time. That is, as long as the door stays closed in a crash.
We had a 91 Mercury Tracer Wagon that had automatic seat belts. In the event of a motor failure you actually could pop off of cover you were provided with an allen key to manually crank belt. Something I would like to know about regular three-point seatbelts is why did it take so long for them to be added to the rear middle seat cars?
Probably because of the added expense of engineering a way to safely add 3 point belts to the rear middle, as well as the simple fact that it wasn't used very often for people.
@@richardmillhousenixon it definitely sounds plausible. I remember a 96 Ford Taurus sedan where the back middle 3 point seat belt was like a manual version of the automatic front seat belts from days past.. most people didn't bother connecting the shoulder strap. They just war the lap belt.
My father had a 1974 Ford Pinto in California (and no, it never exploded). But it came with an interlock that actually prevented the engine from even starting if the seat belt wasn't attached. Dad never ever wore a seat belt, and he quickly figured out that if he pulled out the belt about 12 inches or so, he could hook it onto the door handle, and that was enough to make the interlock think the seat belt was attached!
When I was a teenager, we'd go "cruising" and at the parking area, we prentended the car wouldn't start....the passenger wasn't wearing the seatbelt. So we would get out and open the passenger door and pull the seatbelt like we were starting a lawnmower
The Pinto thing, albeit real and widely known and definitely an issue, was perhaps a bit exaggerated. People did die from it, but isn't the number somewhere from 25 - 30?
@@101Volts it must be larger than that. I knew someone who was decapitated from one in the 90s. I don’t think he had a pinto but I’m not 100% certain. I was thinking he had a Camry or something similar.
That was interesting as well as weird. I've never heard, seen or read about automatic seatbelts before.That mechanism seems like another engineering overkill. No wonder it faded. Thanks for the video!
These seatbelts actually saved my life. I was with my friend driving down a mountain road in his Accord and we never put on the lap belt in that car. He blew a tire and slid off the road into a tree head on at about 65 mph. The only thing that kept us from supermanning out the windshield were these seatbelts.
Despite the injuries I got by just having the shoulder belt on when I wrecked my car, I do truly believe it did save me from a much worse outcome compared to wearing no belt at all. They just made us feel safer than we really were, or they did me anyways!
I remember that during the 1970s there were some new cars that could not start the engine unless the seatbelts were fasten first for the driver and front passenger. People protested for being forced to fasten the seatbelts in order to start the car. Needless to say that seatbelt innovation didn’t sell well and was gone in less than a year.
I don't know if it was urban legend or what, but I remember hearing that the chance of a door flying open during a rollover crash, thereby causing the automatic seat belt to detract, was also a major reason they were done away with.
I was around when these things sorta became "semi popular" (read: just around cuz manufacturers sorta forced them on some models) and most of your points are pretty valid. There are a few things I'd like to add as I was there and knew several people with them too. 1) your point of them failing is pretty spot on... Almost everyone I knew either had one (or both) of their belts start to fail, or gunk up. 2) They were MORE annoying than manual belts. As you showed in a couple shots they would often slap you in the face. They never had any adjustable should position. They were slower than just belting manually. 3) they didn't actually make anyone safer. For one because simply forcing a person to put a belt on against their will will often just cause a person to rebel against it even further. Either people would slip them behind theirselves, or if it had an easy to disengage safety release, they would do that. Also it was found that people with power-belts almost NEVER used the lap belt. Now I don't know if this part was just an urban legend, or something that was actually researched. but we heard that these power belts without using the lap belt were actually more dangerous than no belt at all. Because people would assume that because they power belt engaged they didn't need to use the lap belt, or just didn't care. We had heard stories of people sliding down during wrecks, or getting strangled, having their necks pinched etc. Now; I do not know if there was any data actually collected regarding "No belt Vs. Just shoulder Belt Vs. 3-point belt" but I do know I heard this from different parts of the country, so it was certainly "common knowledge" even if just an Urban Legend.
when i was a young child (probably around 3) my aunt had an old ford probe with automatic seatbelts and i was so deathly afraid of them for some reason that when we were gonna go trick or treating one year, we had to WALK all the way to the next neighborhood over because i would not let my mama or my aunt put me in that car once i saw the seatbelts move on their own. i’m not even kidding one of my core childhood memories is physically fighting and clawing my mom/aunt desperately trying to avoid entering that car because of how terrified i was
I love quirky little gadgets like this. The old cars that just show the thought process of innovation. The Fiero, which was a testbed that was put into production, is my favorite example. Many of it's flaws can be fixed easily today, and it's one of few cars made that is perfectly balanced. The AE86 is another example. Another feature I love is in the 1989 Grand Prix. The Knight Rider-esque HUD in the center is so cool.
Also this solution either has no lap belt, meaning your head could theoretically get caught up in the chest belt in an accident as your lower body is thrusted forwards, or you still have to fasten the lap belt for about the same effort as a regular 3-point belt, making it as useless as it gets.
I had a Sterling 825, and LOVED the automatic Seat Belts. My guess as to why they stopped being a thing is that they could fail in a way where they no longer offered protection
@@ShootingCars HAD one. Wish I still had it, but I slid off a weirdly banked corner on my way home when a friends parents forced us to go home in a fresh snow storm so we wouldn't be at their house snowed in all weekend We were all like 17 or 18 at the time, but I was trying to be cautious as I could as a fairly inexperienced driver. Unfortunately, the curve was an S bend over a hill so as I came around it I wasn't doing more than 8 mph, because I was worried about it, but I started to slide to the outside of the 2nd part of the curve, and chose to steer into it as I had learned I was supposed to, but I probably should have tried some gas instead, I was in low gear and would have still hit the side but not how I did Since I steered into the slide my front passenger tire hit one of the rocks in the ditch we slid into while extended to hit it close to sideways, and caused that to FUBAR the hub and it's steering control arms were ripped off and the whole thing was at an angle IIRC. That's how I ended up moving to a 92Cadilac De Ville which was also pretty sweet in its own way. One thing I miss about the Sterling, besides the auto seat-belt, was that the radio allowed you to make frequency adjustments an extra 1/2 decimal space out. If I was listening to Q104.3 KROK I would put it on 104.35 because it came in more clearly than 104.3 I found few stations where I found out their actual frequency was off by a half step up or down here in New York in the 1990s, for the 90s that dealt like a super power. :)
This feature saved my girlfriends life. She did not buckle up, except for the automatic shoulder belt. We were in an accident where my car flipped. Both crawled out the back windshield unharmed.
I hated the automatic seatbelts in my early 1990's Subaru Legacy. They were not snug against the chest of the driver and passenger and allowed considerable foreword movement in an accident. Even at the time, it was known that slack in a seatbelt system increased the chances of injury. Since I grew up using seatbelts (yes, even in the 1960's), it angered me that this annoying "convenience" actually INCREASED my injury potential. Also, there were a number of occasions when it managed to get wrapped around my neck. Although I cannot remember the exact sequence of events, Usually it would involve leaning foreword while reaching for a dropped item while the automatic system was moving. If I managed to bump the door open enough for it to retract, it somehow ended up around my neck.
As many Cressidas that I've had and I completely forgot about the automatic seatbelts. One actually saved me and a friend after someone ran a light and we hadn't buckled the lap belt. The worst belts were those attached to the door. Who thought that was a good idea?
In the 90's my parents owned an early Plymouth Valiant. I always liked riding in it because it didn't have seatbelts in the back seat. If I got one today, I would have them installed. My grandmother had a Buick with automatic seat belts, and I thought that they were pretty neat.
I remember I was behind a guy at a traffic light and the light turned green, but the guy didn't move for like 5 seconds. I tapped my horn and this guy rages and throws open his door and tries to jump out of his car to confront me. I say tried because his automatic seatbelt proceded to choke him. I just drove around him laughing hysterically.
I've been in 2 accidents, one with a seatbelt and one without. I have to admit...I enjoyed the accident with the seatbelt MUCH MORE than the accident without. I've wore a seatbelt since 1986, and all my adult kids have always worn theirs.
I've only been in one car that had this. It was a 1991 or 92 Ford Escort station wagon that my former guitar/drum teacher owns. I was so confused and surprised when the seatbelts slid back. Also, yes, he still has that car and drives it almost daily.
Fun fact, OEMs could either implement the auto seatbelts OR the airbags. Many opted for the belts. Some went the extra mile (see what I did there) and did include both. Then as you said, mechanical issues and the mandating of the airbags caused these belts to fade into obscurity.
My Grandma had an old car that had automatic seat belts and every time I went for a car ride in her car I always felt like it was the coolest thing I had ever seen 🤣
My sibling had a Pontiac Grand Am with those belts. They were interesting to say the least. I did however like your video here, it was very informative and well put together (I assume you don't have a team) lol I really loved your smile near the end when the belt slides by and locks into place. Good stuff. Brilliant work!
Thanks for this, we never got these here in Australia, and when I've seen pictures of car interiors from around this time I've always wondered just how in the hell they work.
In the case of my 93 legacy (liberty in aus) there's a small brain box for them, a track that runs the vast majority of the window opening, the motor lives in the base of the b pillar and connects to the track with cables that also move the shoulder belt, and there's a separate lap belt. The shoulder belt reels are in the center console under the storage box as well. It's a stupid system and commonly ripped out for regular manual belt like everywhere but the states got
Motorized shoulder belts were not the only kind of automatic seat belts though. There were also shoulder belts that bucked into the doors and swung out when the doors were opened. Others looked like a regular 3-point seat belt, but were mounted completely on the doors instead of the b-pillar or seat, which people were required to leave buckled in at all times when getting in and out of the car, but it was a real struggle, so most people just used those seat belts manually.
In my 1992 Saturn, when the power seatbelts failed, there was a backup, so it wasn't quite as bad as the video implies. (There was a metal piece you could clip into the track and attach the seatbelt to it. I expect all the cars of that era had a backup? But you could certainly lose that metal piece, too.)
What kind of saturn? SL, SC, or SW? (Just curious lmao, saturns are my favorite car, and I was watching rhe video going "Man...Weird My Sl doesnt have these..." but my first sl was 97, and my current one is 98 lmao.)
@@joegomez5463 gold ‘92 sw2, so from before GM took over and still had the full on future look. It was a wonderful car, had it for 18 years and it was still running well when I donated it to a technical school. (I didn’t want to part with it, but “had” to after inheriting another car)
@@CodeKujo Not bad at all. They're super underrated cars man. Glad it didnt just go to the Junker lol. I recentley had to do the valve cover swaparoo, since GM thought plastic was a good idea 🥴
My sister had a late 80’s Mercury Cougar with automatic seatbelts in the early 2000’s. Problem was it broke on her side, so she would use the lap belt you manually had to put on, and at this period of time DUI checkpoints were extremely common around where I live. As luck would have it she was driving me home one night, and we came up on a check point. The officer looks over at me with my automatic seatbelt on, then looks at my sister and says “ok where’s your seatbelt”. My sister pointed out she had the lap belt on, but that wasn’t good enough, she got a ticket. Funny thing is after the cop wrote the ticket, he said if I wouldn’t of had my automatic shoulder belt on, and we both would’ve just had the lap belts on, he would’ve just let us go and assume it’s a older car with no shoulder belt. He’d never seen a auto seatbelt before. I kinda wonder what would’ve happened if she would’ve contested the ticket, cause technically while not as safe, she was wearing a seatbelt.
"I kinda wonder what would’ve happened if she would’ve contested the ticket" Not sure how this kind of thing works in the US, but where I live the fact that the belt was broken would potentially make the whole thing even worse for her because it's basically neglected maintenance.
You had to have both on, the automatic and the manual lap seatbelt, but people were lazy or had a false sense of safety because of the automatic seatbelt, and neglected to put lap seatbelt on.
I knew someone who was in a car crash and was decapitated by the automatic seatbelt. I’ve told everyone I’ve ever seen use one to never ever use the feature in the car. And if it’s stuck in the ON position either fix it before riding or simply cut it with a knife.
Nice video. The phrase you might have been looking for, the requirement of the U.S. government is "PASSIVE RESTRAINT." It was met in three ways: 1. GM chose the cheapest, by attaching the belts to the door. In theory, you would have to manever through this web-like mess without hanging yourself. When you closed the door, PRESTO, your seatbelt was engaged. In reality, most people just disconnected it like a regular belt. 2 The electric shoulder harness you discuss, used by Ford and the Japanese makes. The lap belt still had to be manually connected, and it was found that if this was not done, the occupant would "submarine" under the connected shoulder belt, making it ineffective 3. Last and priciest was the "Supplemental Restraint System," commonly referred to as an "airbag." These were installed by Chrysler, to their credit, as these were the most effective system. It's ironic that GM first offerred airbags, or the "Air Cushion" system, as an option on many of their upscale full-size models in 1974! They were soon discontinued as practically no one ordered them. Soon after Chrysler's introduction of the airbags, it was determined that the airbags were most effective if the seat belts were fastened, so you still had to fasten your belt! Plus in the first years of use, only the driver got an airbag; the passenger was out of luck! Well the first two were hated by most drivers and their passengers, and so all manufacturers eventually switched to airbags. Today you can find vehicles with four, six, even eight or more airbags!
The earliest Dodge Vipers also had door mounted seatbelts, though only on USDM cars. Export versions had them mounted to the rear bulkhead, inboard of the seats like in a Lamborghini Diablo.
@@atlmuscleman Great comment! It really pissed me off how GM always chose the cheap route. The "automatic" seatbelt cheat, the use of 60s technology engines well into the 2000s... and then they acted surprised when they were in dire straights in the late 2000s. 😡🤦🏾♀️
GM skirted the law on cars with full frame doors by attaching the seatbelt to the door so you could in theory leave it buckled and get in/out without having to manually put the belt on. My friend had an 88 Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais like this. Most people used the belts like conventional belts and unbuckled them every time. I always wondered how they would fare in a crash if the door popped open. I think they had an extra latch at the upper part of the door to try to prevent this but I could still see it happening.
The 3rd Gen prelude actually has a recall on the seat belts not being safe in an accident because the doors can pop open and allow you be ejected from the vehicle iirc
Another reason I never liked GM (aside from slim to zero reliability). They really cheated the system and cheaped out, just as they built updated versions of 60s engines all the way into 2010+
Same... Pontiac Grand Am had these too. Pain in the proverbial @ss when it rained hard and you were trying to get in (especially when you had an umbrella)
This is actually what soured me on GM for probably the next 20 years. I figured if they half-@$$'d passive restraint requirements what else were they half-@$$ing.
My dad designed seatbelts for GM. The engineers liked the automatic seatbelts, along with the ones that were connected to the door so that all three points were automatically in place, because they understood the death toll that could be avoided with seatbelts. And now that my mom has dementia, I wish we had a car with the seatbelt connected to the door, because trying to get her buckled up is a colossal pain in the ass.
Considering how many people, especially children, have been injured by airbags historically-speaking, I truly wish the automated seatbelts had been further researched and implemented.
@@BluetheRaccoon Agreed. I will admit that I think the laws & culture have done a great job normalizing and requiring seatbelts, and I'm glad for that.
5:42 - airbags DID NOT and DO NOT work without a seatbelt!!! they will kill you if you don't have your belt on and are often disabled when the belt isn't used
And airbags can kill you if your a woman. It's a pet peeve of mine that I have a weight sensor in the seat that disables the air bag if I have no passenger but if my passenger is a petite woman I have to beg to be allowed to disable it..when it could just not trigger below a certain weight.
My 1989 Ford Taurus had the motorized seat belts. Yes, you still had to manually buckle the lap belt, but the motorized portion never failed. ...I wish I could say the same thing about the *four engines* that Taurus burned through. Yes...I said four. The first one failed while still under warranty. Should have sold it then. The car that the Mythbusters used to test escaping a sinking car looked EXACTLY like my old Taurus. Except for the fact that we were on opposite coasts, I would have assumed the Mythbusters used my old car.
I'm 19 and my first car was a 1989 Toyota Camry and it had automatic seat belts and I thought it was a good idea to force people who suffer from attention seeking issues to wear seatbelts until I learned that if you don't buckle up the manual lap belt then you could break your sternum
An honorable mention is the style of seat belts you can find in Some GM Second Gen. J-Bodies. The seat belts were attached to the door itself and not the B-pillar. When you open the door you can exit while the seat belt is still buckled, solving the no automatic lap belt issue. Owning one that has this feature(1994 Chevy Cavalier), I never use it. It just makes it too difficult to get in and out of the car.
I remember my dad used to own a 1990 Corolla that had them, and I don't think they worked by the time we got the car. I was so confused about why they didn't just use normal seat belts. Thank you for the video.
I live in Australia, and I don't ever remember seeing a car with automatic seatbelts. Mind you, the whole seat belt wearing thing is policed very heavily here. In fact the only ticket I've ever had was for not wearing a seat belt. And from then on I have never failed to wear a seatbelt!
My first introduction to the automatic seatbelt was in 2005 when i was around 5ish years old. My mom owned a Honda Civic DX Sedan (I think that's the car because i do remember it being a honda) and the thing that really stood out about that car was its seat belts. It guess it's also the first time i was introduced to the manual windows. That's all i really remember about that car. She later sold that car and got a van.
😂😂 that's funny. I was born '89 and I remember two cars like that, one was my neighbor's, just remember it was a Mazda and had the pop up headlights, if I had to guess now that I have some gray in my hair, 😄 it was an early 90s, maybe a 90 or 91, and always wondered as a little boy, what the heck's wrong with your seat belt;) the second time was when I went to a technical college 9 years ago, one of my classmates had a 1991 Toyota Camery.
We had these on a car my mother owned when I was young. I loved them. Not for any material use. But because it was the first "automatic" thing in a car I had ever seen. We had to roll our windows up. We didnt have AC. We didnt have an automatic transmission. Everything was bare bones. And then there was this super high tech machine that placed a seatbelts on me when the car started. If I ever win the lottery, I will buy a racecar bed and install automatic seatbelts.
My Toyota Tercel had a semi-automatic, non-motorized two-point shoulder seat belt that attached to the door. You still had to connect the lap belt, but at least you had a shoulder belt by default. It was very convenient and it worked great.
Both my 89 and 91 Cressidas seat belts still work. Fun fact, the Cressidas belts pivoted for comfort unlike my old Honda belts which were fixed. But unlike the Honda belts, the Cressida belts don't unbuckle but they do have safety release levers by the ebrake.
I had an 87 Cressida back 15 years ago and could never figure out what the safety release lever was for, when I pulled it the car beeped and some light flashed on the dashboard! The manual wasn't specific for what it did and now it finally explains everything.
That was awesome of Volvo to give other car manufacturers free access to his patented seat belts. I love when people invent things that can save lives but don't want money for it. They just want to help people live. Like the guy that invented Penicillin. People can be amazing. These inventions could have made them rich. Lives meant more to them than money. Wish more people and companies were like that. Especially, the drug industry, or just the entire medical industry altogether.
Me too, think of how much more peaceful the world would be if it weren't for the greed of so many companies and individuals particularly CEOs and top executives.
I had a Saturn with the seat belt. While it was amusing to see a guest sit in the car without telling them the shoulder would automatically move into place when the door was closed... it wasn't ever an issue and worked well... unlike the engine. It was also easy to un clip the belt for cargo/passenger manipulation. I found it novel, well designed, but not necessary. You still needed to use a lap belt in the same way.. Stunt? Feature? Reminder? You tell me?
I love this video! Love the presentation, especially for using your own car to demonstrate the automatic seat belt. It really makes your video unique. I’m also very surprised about Mazda’s auto seatbelt recall.
My step-dad had a 1995 saturn sl1 that had an automatic seat belt that broke in an accident and he hit the steering wheel and broke his rib. He continued to drive that car for 3 more years with no engine cooing fan (broke during impact) so the engine would overheat the whole time. Odometer reading was stuck at 150,000 miles for 10 years so the car had roughly 300k-400k miles by the time he was done with it. At some point the chain linkage broke so he had it held together with zip ties that he would replace every week. Eventually he sent the car to the junk yard because it was falling apart, the overheating engine and transmission were still going strong.
I had a 1987 Plymouth with this automatic seatbelt. It drove me crazy! It’d always hit me in the head! My Dad installed seatbelts (lap only) in our 1956 Chevy station wagon, along with extra seats in the back. We sat three in the front, four in the back, three more in the way back. It was fine for a number of years so long as we were relatively small, but we later got a Country Squire wagon that was much roomier.
Was hoping to see a mention of GMs even cheaper option where the seatbelt attached to the door and the idea was that it always stayed attached and you got in and slid under the belt. Of course no one used it like this but I’ve been told at dealerships they had to show the cars in this fashion.
If You dont wear seatbelt, the people in other car will be injured and die while You selfish bastard might get away uninjured. Millenial NPC logic in action. Again.
My first new car was a 88 Ford Tempo with these monstrosities installed. I was mid-20s, and visited my grandparents in my new ride. Grandpa was getting wobbly and very old fashioned. He couldn't figure out the geometry of this auto seatbelt nonsense. As soon as he shut the door (in the passenger side) the seatbelt motor engaged, and proceeded to gouge a massive gash across the top of his melon. Blood was everywhere. An ambulance came. Grandma was hysterical. Yeah, I've never been a fan since.
Thats amazing that there are still some of these cars out there and the seat belts still work! My very first car was a 91 accord, I had zero problems with it and always loved driving it. When the seatbelt laws started coming out and everyone was complaining about having to wear it I was already good, minus the lap belt lol
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My understanding at the time was that for a few years during the late 80's/early 90's federal mandates stated that airbags weren't required in vehicles with automatic seatbelts. So many manufacturers used them as they were the cheaper alternative, but they pretty much disappeared in the mid 90's once airbags became federally mandated in all vehicles. (U.S.)
Also another small point: these "Automatic" seatbelts actually solved no problem. You still had a lap belt that had to be manually attached, using almost the exact same amount of effort, and motions, as a manual three-point seatbelt required. I remember there being warnings in my '86 Escort manual that indicated that the automatic seatbelt was actually MORE dangerous without the lap belt.
I suspect that this is another major factor in their disappearance...
That's true. As long the law enforcement saw the belt over your shoulder, they would assume you're fully fastened.
The solution was the lap belt was attached to the door and you had to slide under it to get to the seat.
What I came to comment. I had a 91 mercury topaz with those things.
@@Tim.Stotelmeyer my ex-wife had one of them. Remember in the owners manual calling the seatbelt buckle an emergency release.
actually , the lap belt required less effort
You're missing another, and albeit more important, reason why they were phased out. It still required the use of a manual lap belt. There were many studies and accident investigations which concluded that many drivers were only using the automatic seatbelt and neglected to use the lap belt, which obviously negated a major aspect of the seatbelt.
I never used my lap belt on my 91 accord.
In a previous comment, Carla explains how she almost died from not wearing the lap belt.
Aaron you have hit on the problem of all vehicle safety - what do you leave to the customer to do and what do you automate. It's true with vehicle speed, cleaning your windshield after a snow storm, driving after working too long (tired), drinking too much (no, not "I really have to find a bathroom", the other drinking) and many more. You have correctly pointed out a very important issue, albeit one that does not lend itself to a RUclips video. Shooting Cars - I like your work.
I think a lot more people would have used the lap belt if there was an active warning of some kind like they have now with the light and the beeper. I had 4 different cars with automatic seatbelts and they all had a seatbelt light and beeper that shut off as soon as the shoulder belt was over you and locked in. If you tried to drive with the shoulder belt unhooked it would beep and the light would stay on. Drove me crazy when my mom would ride with me because she would always unhook the shoulder strap when she got in and the light would be on the whole time. The system did not care at all about the lap belt being buckled, so it was just one more reason it seemed like it was unnecessary to wear. If any of my cars would have had that same thing for the lap belt, I would have been reminded that I needed that and just put it on. Granted, I'm sure plenty of people would have done like they do now and just buckle it behind them, but I'm certain there is a large number of people who would have used their lap belts if the car nagged at them to wear it. Nowadays I can't drive my Kia across a parking lot without losing my sanity, so now I buckle up anytime the car moves anywhere to keep the beeper happy. Just a poorly thought out design is what it boils down to, the bare minimum to satisfy a requirement and nothing more which unfortunately killed some people.
That *is* very important.
Thanks for mentioning that. That is a very important thing to not have included in the video.
Being a kid growing up in the 80s and sitting in several different cars with automatic seatbelts I really have to say I absolutely hated Automatic seatbelts I got hung up in them constantly lol
You are like them husbands who get stuck in the blinds lol
Dude it’s got a button you can just unbuckle then
@@fastinradfordable dude you’re talking to a 10 year old me lol.. what the hell did I know at the time this was new technology for me back then!!
@@fastinradfordable Not all of them. There were a few cars that did not have a convenient button to disconnect. iirc Ford was one of them.
Why and how? There isn’t anything difficult about them.
When I was a kid in the seventies, and a teenager in the eighties, _nobody_ I knew wore seatbelts -- except me. They should have. When I was a kid, I had been in an accident where we got rear-ended while stopped in a traffic jam. It was a five-car pileup, and we were in the car that the one causing accident crashed into, so we got it worst of all. I had been asleep in the backseat, and woke up to find myself bouncing like a pinball back and forth between the front and rear seats, but at least I came out of it without a scratch. My grandparents weren't so lucky. My grandmother had a broken arm and broken nose from hitting the dashboard, but Grandad, though he had no broken bones, got it much worse. When the dust settled, you could see strands of his hair hanging out of a star his head had made in the windshield. He lived many more years, but years later said that he never really felt good again after that accident, and years later, he had a series of strokes that incapacitated him during the last decade of his life, and I do wonder if the head trauma was a contributing factor. Maybe not, but still...
Anyway, from the time I started driving at sixteen, I always remembered that accident, and always wore my seat belt.
When one is relaxed & involved in a car accident, one gets fewer injuries. That’s why drunk drivers have hardly any injuries in car accidents.
@@alton791 Oh I was _far_ from relaxed in that accident, once I was jerked awake by the first impact. Then I instinctively curled tightly into a fetal position, and as I said, just bounced back and forth several times between the front and back seats. I was always amazed I had no cuts and scrapes, because the back seat was covered in the hundreds of fragments of the shattered rear window. Thank God auto glass shatters into tiny pebble-size fragments, rather than long, dagger-like shards. But while the lack of scratches from all the still-rough edged glass fragments seems slightly miraculous to me, my lack of broken bones or other major injuries is really more attributable to the fact that I kept hitting the rear of the front seats, and the front of the rear seat back -- both soft, heavily padded surfaces -- rather than my being "relaxed."
When I turned 16 in 1978, I got my grandfather's 1970 Buick Electra to drive. I had seen the seat belt videos in driver's ed and knew it made sense to wear them but I didn't at first. However after about a week of seeing "Fasten Seat Belts" printed above the steering column, I decided to put the belts on- those were the old style separate lap and shoulder belts. I was amazed how much better the car drove and handled with the belts on and that is what really got me in the habit of wearing them in addition to the safety aspect. All of my friends thought I was nuts for buckling up and usually I was the only one in the car wearing a belt. Fast forward to 1982 and coming home from college one weekend. A drunk driver in a Chevy Suburban hit me head on. I walked away with only bruises from the belts which was far better than the unbuckled drunk driver.
@@alton791 Why some* drunk drivers have less injuries. Not tensing is defly good, but there's still tons that get horribly hurt. There's a lot of other factors too, like it's usually the drunk's car hitting someone else, so they get more benefit from their seat belts, airbags, and are generally in a better position to absorb the forces, where if it's something like the side of the other car, they're incredibly disadvantaged.
Seat belts are the one thing that there should be no excuse against. They are saving lives and prevent serious injuries
I argue that they were also really impractical as the passenger still needed to buckle the lap belt. With the standard 3 point, it was one motion that engaged the lap belt and shoulder belt.
Very popular with older people when I was a kid. Not everyone can reach an item at shoulder height within the confines of a car. The lap belt is easier to reach for people with lower mobility.
you have to realize who these were marketed to. people who would always forget to buckle their seatbelt because for decades they drove without one and it wasn't a problem until they started writing you $100 tickets for not wearing it. back in the 80s $100 meant a lot more than it does today.
these people were not concerned with their lives and the cop cant see that they don't have the lap part attached as they are driving by.
I found this funnily sneaky, forcing people to wear seatbelts by putting them on for them. I suppose many people unclipped the seatbelt and stuffed it between the seat. Carmakers, always looking for the cheap and easy way, found automatic belts to be easier than airbags. Once airbags became mandatory there was no reason/need to install automatic belts.
You also should have mentioned that the lap belt still had to be manually fastened. The shoulder belt alone is not enough to prevent injury in a crash and can be worse than a lap belt alone.
And how the 3 point belt can be worse than 2 point lap belt?
It seems that a lot of Japanese automobiles in the 1980's always lagged on safety devices until forced by government mandates for airbags. One of the reasons why I have always owned German automobiles. Anyone old enough to remember the early 1970's when some American cars would not start unless the seatbelt was buckled?
@@kennixox262 I didn't realize they had cars that wouldn't start without the seatbelt buckled. My Ford ('77) has a buzzer that goes off for eight seconds after you start the car if your belt is not buckled first. My Cadillac ('73) and Plymouth ('72) actually both have occupancy sensors for the front passenger seats, so if you set something heavy enough in the seat, the FASTEN SEATBELTS buzzer and light come on because the car thinks an unbuckled passenger is in the seat. Needless to say, all three cars quickly had their buzzers disconnected. I always wear my seatbelt and make my passengers do so as well, so the buzzers were just an unnecessary nuisance in my case.
@@NoName-ik2du I believe around 1972, that was the model year my mom purchased a Cadillac Fleetwood and can remember that she was quite annoyed by that. Was rather young myself, about 10 or so but to recall that. The car was a POS and that quickly went away for a Mercedes.
@@TheKitMurkit If you didn't fasten the lap belt it wasn't a 3 point belt, only a 2 point shoulder harness in that state. And I recall hearing an urban legend about how if you didn't have the lab belt fastened with those 2 point shoulder harnesses, you could risk slicing your neck on the shoulder belt in a sudden crash without the lap belt to aid in holding you in place. Not entirely sure how true it is but running the edge of those old belts across some exposed skin sure could be painful if you did it hard enough 😬
I'm probably one of the few people that actually loved this feature, just for the convenience of not having to buckle and unbuckle! Which therein lies the biggest problem with these that you didn't mention - almost no one used the separate lap belt that you had to put on yourself, and a lot of us didn't realize just how dangerous it was if you didn't wear it. For all the years I had cars with these I always felt safe with just the shoulder part around me so I never ever bothered with putting on the lap belt, the thought that I needed to wear it never crossed my mind. Everyone had these seatbelts in the 90's, and that was how you used them- you got in, the shoulder strap went around and you drove off. So handy! In 2011 I was cruising down the highway in my 1993 Eclipse that I dearly loved, a car pulled out in front of me and I T-boned it going like 60. I ended up with a broken collarbone, a collapsed lung, a broken ankle, a massive bruise across my chest, and a big gash in my neck. At the ER the doctor asked me if I was in a car with automatic seatbelts and didn't have the lap belt fastened because if so they needed to do further checks. Apparently some people got their livers and kidney slashed by the shoulder belt and bled internally from it without even knowing. Fortunately I did not have those injuries. After I recovered I started doing some reading about this and there were a lot of people who died or were seriously maimed from these, all for the same reason-they weren't wearing the lap belt. Car companies even got sued for putting this system in because it made people feel safe when they weren't. Had any of my cars had some kind on warning on them like "you can be decapitated without the lap belt on" or "you'll fly out the door if it opens in a crash" I probably would have thought twice about the importance of the lap belt and actually used it. Which would have negated the whole reason I liked them in the first place, not having to put my own seatbelt on! So yeah, if you still have one of these cars then don't be like me and wear your dang lap belt, it is important even if it feels unnecessary.
Pathetic and lazy 😜
I had the same car! I never knew how important that lap belt was
You traded your safety for convenience... and it almost took your life.
Glad you survived to tell the story!
@@sonictimm Thank you, me too!
I remember when the fed gov drafted legislation for cars to have automatic seat belts. Because it ensured all drivers at least had the cross belt on. Then safety reports proving it didn’t really help because the lap belt wasn’t used. You needed both to be effective. They dumped the bill.
I'm shocked they dumped the bill when data not showing something to be effective hasn't stopped anything else from happening.
I was in a serious accident in the 80s, when we didn't wear seatbelts, and I'm not even sure if our cars had them when I was a kid. It was a miracle we survived, but I am still affected by the head injury I sustained to this day. I always made sure to wear one after that.
@@saramaki1088 you look really amazing tho. 😍
They don't like to talk about it, but studies have indicated that backseat passengers get spinal injuries from wearing just a lap belt.
@@TheRealDrJoey That doesn't surprise me. Having both belts spreads the force across a greater portion of the spine, and reduces the damage to any particular part. A harness would arguably be even better, but there are practical reasons why it isn't typically used in cars.
You forgot to mention one very important reason for their failures. The autoomated process only did the shoulder strap, you had to manually do the lap belt. Many who didn't got injured when they slid off the seat.
Agreed. "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help" are the scariest words that come to mind here. Myself born in '89 I've seen a handful of these cars, never sat in one thankfully, the only type of auto seat belts I've used, were in my uncle Frank's 1990 Cadillac Brougham. The seat belts were mounted in the door, the buckle was intended for emergency use only of course everyone treated them as manual belts, so I wouldn't call them automatic belts per se. In addition if the door flew open during a crash you're coming out with it. When I was a kid even I thought that was weird. Both versions of automatic belts should never have been allowed to exist, if you really wanna know the truth. They were potentially less effective than manual belts and provided a false sense of security.
@@Sparky-ww5re In the mid 70s as a teenager I had my grandfather's 1970 Buick Electra. I was that rare teenager that buckled up both the lap and shoulder belts. In the Electra the lap and shoulder belts were 2 completely separate belts with each having it's own buckle. The lap belt had a smaller buckle and a retracter for the male ene. The shoulder belt however didn't have a retracter and had to be manually adjusted- you left enough space between your chest and the belt. When properly adjusted those belts really felt secure. As a teenage smoker with the shoulder belt on it was a bit confining especially when reaching for the cigarette lighter and ashtray, but I persevered. All of my friends thought I was nuts for buckling up the lap and shoulder belts and I was usually the only one in the car with the belts buckled. A couple of years later a drunk driver in a Chevrolet suburban crossed the center line and hit me head on. Because of the size of the car and the fact that I was wearing both belts, I walked away with only bruises from the belts which was far better than the unbelted other driver. The myth that older cars were unsafe, and yes they didn't have the safety features of today's cars, was that very, very people wore seat belts. Usually the people who did, only wore the lap belt and that only offered protection for the lower body. The "confining" shoulder belts in combination with the lap belts offered very good protection as I am living proof of. The drunk driver that hit me was wearing a 3 point seat belt with the shoulder belt under his left arm, basically a 3 point lap belt. He had massive facial and chest injuries from the steering wheel and his unbelted passenger went through the windshield and landed on the hood with severe injuries. No seat belt, a lap belt only and an early 3 point seat belt, which I was wearing. I was the only one who walked away from that head on collision.
@@bradparris99 exactly what you said, belt means you get to live another day, had a few high speed accidents in my life and in each and every single one of them i got out by myself, before anyone stopped to help
@@wittekPL You buy insurance for your car for when it is in a collision. Properly wearing lap and shoulder belts is insurance for the driver and passengers. Most of the time "insurance" takes care of the damage and sadly sometimes not, but you are better off having anything possible to stack the odds in your favor. Even as a teenager, it was a no brainer to buckle up.
@@bradparris99 where i live insurance is mandatory. If you don't pay it you will automatically receive a heavy fine, plus more time you will delay with payment it will stack to a pretty crazy sum.
I had forgotten about them. Many people hated wearing a seatbelt, but most people just forgot. I remember having to remind my parents to put on their seatbelts. Even in their old age, they would pull out of the driveway and start putting on their seatbelt as they were driving. Then my mom got into the habit of taking it off a block away from the house. I wondered about that. It's like she was preparing to dive out of the car.
Seat-belts weren't required to be used until sometime in the mid-80s depending upon where you lived. The first law in the US was in NY and it took effect in 1984. I remember going with my dad to a junkyard to get a seatbelt to install in the backseat of the car, so that there would be a lapbelt for the kids sitting there.I knew a kid that literally fell out of a car going around a turn because the door popped open and he wasn't wearing a seatbelt.
Some people are set in their ways or honestly believe that after all the years they've been driving without needing the belt that they won't need it in the future. I've only been in one car crash and the belt didn't do anything. I was hit from behind at low speed and the seat alone would have been sufficient. But, I still buckle up because who knows if I'll be as lucky the next time.
My MIL got into a really bad accident as a passenger when she was 17. It effed up her neck pretty badly. The scar from the surgery to fix it is huge. They (my in-laws) used to have to drive down a small hill of a driveway to get into the parking lot of their old apartment. At the bottom of the hill, it quickly veered to the right, and you couldn't see around the corner because there were trees and bushes. It was mind-boggling to me that as soon as she pulled off the road and into that descending driveway, she'd fcking unbuckle her seat belt. Every time. And more than once, someone would be tearing around that corner like a bat out of hell to go UP the driveway.
I just could never forget to put a seatbelt on. It's just so instinctive to belt up, if I don't something just feels super wrong
My parents also did that, but I assume it’s cause we lived in a tiny one way street neighborhood and usually no one was on the road
My '94 Saturn has both automatic belts and a driver's side airbag. The sun visors are getting pretty chewed up because the seatbelt carriage can get stuck on them if the visors are swung over to the side when you open the door. This is my third car with automatic belts and the first one on which I've noticed this issue.
A few years ago I got a letter from Mazda about an ignition switch recall on a '91 323 I used to have. I have to say I was impressed how old of a car they would recall, though by that point the 323 had already succumbed to other issues.
Saturn SL2, probably the same year. Jeeze, that was decades ago. Man time flies.
I remember the whole automatic seatbelt thing. I never owned a vehicle with them. I have been a habitual user of seat belts since the day that my family was involved in a real bloody car accident when I was 10. Our car was old enough that it wasn’t equipped with seat belts. My father picked me up from the hospital with our other car that had them and since that moment I have ALWAYS buckled my belt.
Right, why did we only consider the front occupants in the law? Children and adults can climb around all inside the back of the vehicle, but front seaters will be PENALIZED.
@@tynewlin because people falsely believe the back is safe without a seatbelt. It’s not and in fact it might be worse because rear passengers can crush front passengers if they don’t have a seatbelt
Yup, I've been in a rollover crash before, and my seat belt was the only thing keeping me from falling to the ceiling-floor. I had been in other, less serious accidents before that were enough to get me in the habit before that day. I have never forgotten my belt since.
attaboy! my wife had a big issue with using her. luckily alot of newer cars will chime until you use them, her new 2015 Focus does this. She would always cite the 'I'll burn alive in the car because I cant get the belt off!'. I had to sit her down and show her the statistics that its much more likely you'll bust your head open on the windshield before a car burst into flames and be trapped in it.
@@longbow6416
You should send her to me. I worked 44 years in the automotive industry, the last 24 in collision repair. I saw people who were properly restrained walking away from some pretty nasty stuff. I would get whiners that complained about an abrasion from an airbag. I would always remember my brother and his friend who both went through the windshield and back in again in our 1960 Falcon with no seat belts and a metal dashboard. My brothers friend had 125 stitches in his face and had to have plastic surgery. My brother had 72 stitches and was picking glass fragments out of his head for two years. I’ll take a seat belt any day.
Automatic seatbelts never caught on in the UK, thankfully. Inertial reel seatbelts were becoming the norm in Europe around that time. I think automatic seatbelts were all static. Inertial reel belts are just so much better so perhaps this hastened the demise of the automatic variety.
I had a teacher who had been in an accident, the door opened while it was rolling and the seatbelt dutifully came off causing his head to get smashed. Was incredible that he survived it and still managed to be a teacher.
I’m surprised you didn’t include a few clips of automatic seatbelt fails as well-many of them pretty funny. Basically, if you arrive at your friends house and are so excited to see them that you’re sticking your head out the window talking to them AS YOU PULL THE DOOR HANDLE, then you could get your neck trapped in the mechanism. Both terrifying and hilarious at the same time.
fuck them seat belts
I thought for sure that would have been mentioned in the video b/c I know so many people that it happened to. Glad you brought it. Brings back some laughs.
The secondary issue with them: you still had to manually clip the lap belt portion.
I remember visiting the US as a 6 year old kid in 1996 and being amazed at the automatic seat belts. Always thought they were sooo cool!
They seemed cool at first, then became annoying. Ended up getting a lot of people killed because not many knew about the lap belt, and if you do not hook up the lap belt the automatic belt became a noose.
I still remember going USA and everyone was still using mobile phones while driving when it was already illegal in Europe 🤣.
Even at the petrol pumps the Americans had the phones out
Me too! Didn't know they were harmful to people tho.
@@sko1beer
I remember visiting Europe in the 90s and they were still using LEADED fuel even though it had been outlawed in the US for about 20 yrs at the time!
@@fazolen the USA leaded gasoline began phasing out in around 1974, and wasn't completely done with until 1996. Throughout the 80s the lead content was reduced significantly. My first vehicle, 1993 Ford Ranger said unleaded fuel only at the filler and near the fuel guage on the dash to warn the driver not to use leaded fuel where it's available, because it would quickly damage the catalytic converter and maybe other parts of the truck. On the other hand old engines from pre-1970 could be damaged when ran on unleaded fuel because tetraethyllead acted as an internal lubricant for the valves in addition to an octane booster
I still remember getting a ride in my friend's mom's car several times in the late '90s and her car had these! They were so COOL! I wish they were still around.....
They had these in the 90's. I had a 93 and a 94 sentra that had these seat belts. I found out they worked when I hit a tree. I always assumed they would just break, especially at the speed I hit that tree. But they help.... Bruised the eff outta my sternum but saved my life.
Mind you, this was an exclusively American thing and I'm sitting here with friends from across Europe and no one's ever even just heard of an automatic seatbelt
Crazy stuff
Bless Murica what would we do without you
I have a 1987 Camry with automatic seat belts. They still work, and the only issue I’ve had with them was actually a wiring problem in the door. There is a switch inside the door latch that enables the shoulder belt when the door is closed. The wiring that runs to this switch eventually breaks at the door hinge from years of opening and closing the door. I replaced the wiring and it’s good as new. They’re a very niche feature that, much like burgundy velour interiors, will likely never return.
The ones in my 84 Cressida still work too 🤣. It's funny when people get surprised by them.
I know someone who was decapitated by one back in the 90s. He was in a car crash and I’m assuming the door was ripped off. My family and I have been avid about educating everyone we know about the danger. Please reconsider wearing it.
@@shanester366 they can decapitate top you if you’re in a wreck. I knew someone who died in the 90s after being in a car wreck with one. Please don’t wear it.
@@larsonfamilyhouse that's crazy sorry to hear that. Luckily that car is not my daily driver, it pretty much only puts around the neighborhood these days I drive something much more modern as my daily.
I have automatic seatbelts in my 92 svx that still work. I love them so much. They confuse people that have never heard of them but are really convenient. I wish they stayed around for longer. The only issue is occasionally you hit your head on the sliding mechanism and it really hurts
Not being shitty... How are they more convenient? You still have to clip a lap belt no?
@@kevinhibbard320 oh no lol. I dont use it lol. Im planning to get bucket seats and a harness and just let it run the track without the belt
@@SVXtasy_ Maybe unplug the trigger switch or power to the motor that way part doesn’t burn itself out? If you want it again later clean and grease the track and plug it back in. By the way cool car!
I have them in my 92 svx also and my 94 turbo legacy. I had to get a track at the junkyard to repair the driver side in the legacy that was seized. Easy repair and totally worth it. They are so cool I think. I never want to convert them to manual belts
The SVX can be such an amazing car with custom mods like a Manual trans and STI drive train. It's a ton of work from what I hear, but the SVX looks really cool and worth the money and effort IMO.
Born in 89 I remember riding in two cars having automatic seat belts. The first was my neighbor's 1989 Honda Accord. Though the seat belts were very strange. My uncle owned a 1990 Cadillac Brougham, seat belts in the door. Never seen any other car with very weird seat belts. But I really liked the gas cap behind the license plate also the only car I've seen like that, but if there was a line at the gas station it didn't matter which side opened up first. The ability to fill from either side was pretty cool.
Yeh I had a job pumping gas at my local gas station when I was 15 & the first time I had a car come in with the gas cap behind the license plate I was thrown!🤣💯👍
A lot of gm cars from late 70-80s had the gas cap behind the plate.
So the seatbelt in the door was GM's alternative to the automatic seat belt. The seatbelts in the door was designed to stay buckled and you just kind of climed in around it lmao
If there’s a line at the gas station an im in my miata i take whatever’s shortest, because the gas flap is sitting near horizontal on the trunk its super easy to fill up from the wrong side
The large 1990 (that year only) G. M. models (and also probably some of their small early to mid 90s cars) had that poor seat belt system that could throw someone out of the car if the door opened. That's G.M. Law Loophole Engineering for you.
This is a piece of car history I didn't know I need to learn about! Thank you!
Short, simple, and straight to the point! As a 21 year old, I had no idea these were a thing until recently
My final assignment for my french class back in high school was regarding safety regulations in cars, so, while that was about half a decade ago, I didn't expect to really learn anything, just to be refreshed on what I already knew, but I was pleasantly surprised! This was a really informative and enjoyable video, keep it up!
Seat belts are a living testament to the fact that the more simple a safety feature is, usually the safer it is.
Yep! Air bags were mandated to protect those too stupid to wear seat belts. So now we all get to ride around with little bombs in front of our faces, and manufacturers get to issue about a zillion recalls to try to stem the tide of airbag-caused deaths.
My first car was a 1993 Ford Escort and it had good, working automated seatbelts. It wasn't until a little while after I owned the car that I realized there was actually a lap belt that you still had to attach manually. The retaining loop that's supposed to keep it against the side of the seat was broken so I never even noticed the belt was there until I spotted the latch on the other side. Everyone thought the seatbelt mechanism was so cool in my car, but then one day my best friend drove my car and for some reason, in his care, it broke on the drivers side. The belt would only go so far up the track and then proceed to make loud clicking noises for the rest of the trip. The passenger side kept working just fine, but I eventually had to go in and manually reel the seatbelt all the way to the latched position and disconnect the electrical connector which also disconnected the driver door chime and dome light activation. Luckily you can just disconnect it at the shoulder so that's what I did for the remainder of time I owned the car.
Your friend broke it playing around with it. 💯
@@jimmbobb Maybe, he wasn’t the most mechanically conscious person… and he was a bigger guy so no telling what he did or didn’t pay attention to when getting in and out of the car. Perhaps blocked the path while it was moving and it broke like that? I don’t know…
@@man_on_wheelz Granny had a 1987 Escort (the first year they used the auto belts). My cousin and I, both about 8 years old, were left in the car while my aunt ran into a friend's house. We opened and shut the door several times, holding the belt back and stopping it. Until it finally stopped working. My aunt was SO PISSED! She yelled and cussed at us the whole way home, the seatbelt about a quarter of the way from the "back" position so she couldn't sit properly. After a while of playing possum it started working again, thankfully.
My first car, a 1995 Plymouth Acclaim, had an automatic seat belt for the driver only. Always wondered why you didn’t see more of them. It was neat, if ultimately useless.
Great video!
Interesting. Was yours a Canadian model? Chrysler introduced air bags pretty early on in the U.S. market, and my dad's Acclaim from 1991 or 1992 had a driver air bag.
When I was kid, my dads 89 Thunderbird SC had auto seatbelts. To be honest, they are the reason why i where seatbelts. I feel weird without them. But that feature in particular, just felt like the car was hugging you, telling you its going to keep you safe, while you are out on a fun saturday drive with dad. Such Nostalgia seeing this video.
My mom had a 92 Nissan Stanza with power belts when I was growing up. I remember them being super-annoying - not because I didn't want to buckle up, but because they were always -ALWAYS - in the way. They could block your view or reach to controls when in the retracted position, you had to wait for them to retract upon leaving the car, and most annoyingly they weren't height-adjustable so that if you weren't just the right height, they were uncomfortable while driving. We never had trouble with the motors, though, and we drove that car into the ground. I wasn't sad to see that feature go, though you could say that the motorized belt extenders used in some luxury coupes and convertibles are its spiritual successor.
"Anything motorized will break." This is what I keep grumbling quietly to myself whenever I see a new electric car full of "hey look what I can do" features. Falcon wing doors, anyone? I've always thought it was amusing that even though the car tries to garrote you every time you get in, you still have to manually fasten the lap belt.
My favorite work-around was the door-mounted seatbelt that you're supposed to leave fastened and slide in beneath every time. That is, as long as the door stays closed in a crash.
I just finished editing a video of the Model X with the falcon doors, and I have a 94 cavalier video coming with the door mounted belts!
You know all cars are motorized.... right
@@GhostKing6790 Have you ever had a car that didn't have something break? QED.
@@bwofficial1776 thank you for proving my point. Electric cars will be no different than normal cars with just as complicated systems and parts.
But why not have fun shit in your already expensive car? Eventually the whole thing is gonna break so might as well enjoy it to its fullest
We had a 91 Mercury Tracer Wagon that had automatic seat belts. In the event of a motor failure you actually could pop off of cover you were provided with an allen key to manually crank belt. Something I would like to know about regular three-point seatbelts is why did it take so long for them to be added to the rear middle seat cars?
Because only drivers buy new cars
Probably because of the added expense of engineering a way to safely add 3 point belts to the rear middle, as well as the simple fact that it wasn't used very often for people.
@@richardmillhousenixon it definitely sounds plausible. I remember a 96 Ford Taurus sedan where the back middle 3 point seat belt was like a manual version of the automatic front seat belts from days past.. most people didn't bother connecting the shoulder strap. They just war the lap belt.
I really like the mini documentaries on particulars of vehicle things like these. I wouldn’t mind more like this.
As a kid, I used to think that you were LOADED if you had a fancy ass seat belt like this😂💀
My father had a 1974 Ford Pinto in California (and no, it never exploded). But it came with an interlock that actually prevented the engine from even starting if the seat belt wasn't attached. Dad never ever wore a seat belt, and he quickly figured out that if he pulled out the belt about 12 inches or so, he could hook it onto the door handle, and that was enough to make the interlock think the seat belt was attached!
When I was a teenager, we'd go "cruising" and at the parking area, we prentended the car wouldn't start....the passenger wasn't wearing the seatbelt. So we would get out and open the passenger door and pull the seatbelt like we were starting a lawnmower
@@KCFlyer2 🤣🤣🤣
The Pinto thing, albeit real and widely known and definitely an issue, was perhaps a bit exaggerated. People did die from it, but isn't the number somewhere from 25 - 30?
@@101Volts it must be larger than that. I knew someone who was decapitated from one in the 90s. I don’t think he had a pinto but I’m not 100% certain. I was thinking he had a Camry or something similar.
First video I've seen of yours. Was really well done for a smaller channel like this, very impressed. I've subscribed and can't wait to see more!
That was interesting as well as weird. I've never heard, seen or read about automatic seatbelts before.That mechanism seems like another engineering overkill. No wonder it faded.
Thanks for the video!
I have these on my "93 Thunderbird and I absolutely love them!
These seatbelts actually saved my life. I was with my friend driving down a mountain road in his Accord and we never put on the lap belt in that car. He blew a tire and slid off the road into a tree head on at about 65 mph. The only thing that kept us from supermanning out the windshield were these seatbelts.
Despite the injuries I got by just having the shoulder belt on when I wrecked my car, I do truly believe it did save me from a much worse outcome compared to wearing no belt at all. They just made us feel safer than we really were, or they did me anyways!
@@Carla_78 agreed. I'll always have a place in my heart for this setup.
nooooooooooo it can't be, everyone already said they were actually MORE dangerous...... lol
was the seatbelt motorized like the main point of this vid?
@@judasthepious1499 Yes, that's why I said "these seatbelts".... I wasn't talking about a 5 point racing harness. I thought that was pretty obvious.
I remember that during the 1970s there were some new cars that could not start the engine unless the seatbelts were fasten first for the driver and front passenger. People protested for being forced to fasten the seatbelts in order to start the car. Needless to say that seatbelt innovation didn’t sell well and was gone in less than a year.
I don't know if it was urban legend or what, but I remember hearing that the chance of a door flying open during a rollover crash, thereby causing the automatic seat belt to detract, was also a major reason they were done away with.
Two comments above yours is describing exactly that happening to someone they know, they lived thankfully.
I was around when these things sorta became "semi popular" (read: just around cuz manufacturers sorta forced them on some models) and most of your points are pretty valid. There are a few things I'd like to add as I was there and knew several people with them too. 1) your point of them failing is pretty spot on... Almost everyone I knew either had one (or both) of their belts start to fail, or gunk up. 2) They were MORE annoying than manual belts. As you showed in a couple shots they would often slap you in the face. They never had any adjustable should position. They were slower than just belting manually. 3) they didn't actually make anyone safer. For one because simply forcing a person to put a belt on against their will will often just cause a person to rebel against it even further. Either people would slip them behind theirselves, or if it had an easy to disengage safety release, they would do that. Also it was found that people with power-belts almost NEVER used the lap belt. Now I don't know if this part was just an urban legend, or something that was actually researched. but we heard that these power belts without using the lap belt were actually more dangerous than no belt at all. Because people would assume that because they power belt engaged they didn't need to use the lap belt, or just didn't care. We had heard stories of people sliding down during wrecks, or getting strangled, having their necks pinched etc. Now; I do not know if there was any data actually collected regarding "No belt Vs. Just shoulder Belt Vs. 3-point belt" but I do know I heard this from different parts of the country, so it was certainly "common knowledge" even if just an Urban Legend.
I graduated highschool 2014 but my high school car had a automatic seatbelt and I miss it sometimes.
when i was a young child (probably around 3) my aunt had an old ford probe with automatic seatbelts and i was so deathly afraid of them for some reason that when we were gonna go trick or treating one year, we had to WALK all the way to the next neighborhood over because i would not let my mama or my aunt put me in that car once i saw the seatbelts move on their own. i’m not even kidding one of my core childhood memories is physically fighting and clawing my mom/aunt desperately trying to avoid entering that car because of how terrified i was
I love quirky little gadgets like this. The old cars that just show the thought process of innovation.
The Fiero, which was a testbed that was put into production, is my favorite example. Many of it's flaws can be fixed easily today, and it's one of few cars made that is perfectly balanced. The AE86 is another example.
Another feature I love is in the 1989 Grand Prix. The Knight Rider-esque HUD in the center is so cool.
Also this solution either has no lap belt, meaning your head could theoretically get caught up in the chest belt in an accident as your lower body is thrusted forwards, or you still have to fasten the lap belt for about the same effort as a regular 3-point belt, making it as useless as it gets.
I had a Sterling 825, and LOVED the automatic Seat Belts.
My guess as to why they stopped being a thing is that they could fail in a way where they no longer offered protection
YOU HAVE A STEARLING??
@@ShootingCars HAD one. Wish I still had it, but I slid off a weirdly banked corner on my way home when a friends parents forced us to go home in a fresh snow storm so we wouldn't be at their house snowed in all weekend
We were all like 17 or 18 at the time, but I was trying to be cautious as I could as a fairly inexperienced driver.
Unfortunately, the curve was an S bend over a hill so as I came around it I wasn't doing more than 8 mph, because I was worried about it, but I started to slide to the outside of the 2nd part of the curve, and chose to steer into it as I had learned I was supposed to, but I probably should have tried some gas instead, I was in low gear and would have still hit the side but not how I did
Since I steered into the slide my front passenger tire hit one of the rocks in the ditch we slid into while extended to hit it close to sideways, and caused that to FUBAR the hub and it's steering control arms were ripped off and the whole thing was at an angle IIRC.
That's how I ended up moving to a 92Cadilac De Ville which was also pretty sweet in its own way.
One thing I miss about the Sterling, besides the auto seat-belt, was that the radio allowed you to make frequency adjustments an extra 1/2 decimal space out.
If I was listening to Q104.3 KROK I would put it on 104.35 because it came in more clearly than 104.3
I found few stations where I found out their actual frequency was off by a half step up or down here in New York in the 1990s, for the 90s that dealt like a super power. :)
This feature saved my girlfriends life. She did not buckle up, except for the automatic shoulder belt. We were in an accident where my car flipped. Both crawled out the back windshield unharmed.
My Dad had these on his 1993 Nissan Maxima and I liked them a lot. It felt cool using them.
I hated the automatic seatbelts in my early 1990's Subaru Legacy. They were not snug against the chest of the driver and passenger and allowed considerable foreword movement in an accident. Even at the time, it was known that slack in a seatbelt system increased the chances of injury. Since I grew up using seatbelts (yes, even in the 1960's), it angered me that this annoying "convenience" actually INCREASED my injury potential.
Also, there were a number of occasions when it managed to get wrapped around my neck. Although I cannot remember the exact sequence of events, Usually it would involve leaning foreword while reaching for a dropped item while the automatic system was moving. If I managed to bump the door open enough for it to retract, it somehow ended up around my neck.
That's what makes a Subaru, a Subaru.
... forward* movement - never trust your auto-correct/-complete!
92 SVX, mine were perfect all around... In 2 door cars, these also made getting into the back seat much less fustrating.
As many Cressidas that I've had and I completely forgot about the automatic seatbelts. One actually saved me and a friend after someone ran a light and we hadn't buckled the lap belt. The worst belts were those attached to the door. Who thought that was a good idea?
In the 90's my parents owned an early Plymouth Valiant. I always liked riding in it because it didn't have seatbelts in the back seat. If I got one today, I would have them installed. My grandmother had a Buick with automatic seat belts, and I thought that they were pretty neat.
My jaw dropped when I first saw the automatic seat belts as a kid😲
I remember I was behind a guy at a traffic light and the light turned green, but the guy didn't move for like 5 seconds. I tapped my horn and this guy rages and throws open his door and tries to jump out of his car to confront me. I say tried because his automatic seatbelt proceded to choke him. I just drove around him laughing hysterically.
I've been in 2 accidents, one with a seatbelt and one without. I have to admit...I enjoyed the accident with the seatbelt MUCH MORE than the accident without. I've wore a seatbelt since 1986, and all my adult kids have always worn theirs.
I've only been in one car that had this. It was a 1991 or 92 Ford Escort station wagon that my former guitar/drum teacher owns. I was so confused and surprised when the seatbelts slid back. Also, yes, he still has that car and drives it almost daily.
Those are great cars! Very underrated.
Fun fact, OEMs could either implement the auto seatbelts OR the airbags. Many opted for the belts. Some went the extra mile (see what I did there) and did include both. Then as you said, mechanical issues and the mandating of the airbags caused these belts to fade into obscurity.
“Lifesaving device is just so hard to put on” lmfao😩🤣🤣🤣
"You know what this safety device needs?"
"Some extra points of potential failure that offer little to no actual benefit to the user?"
"Exactly."
My Grandma had an old car that had automatic seat belts and every time I went for a car ride in her car I always felt like it was the coolest thing I had ever seen 🤣
My friends parents had one and I always Loved being able to ride in their car and use it 😅
My sibling had a Pontiac Grand Am with those belts. They were interesting to say the least.
I did however like your video here, it was very informative and well put together (I assume you don't have a team) lol
I really loved your smile near the end when the belt slides by and locks into place. Good stuff. Brilliant work!
6:55-7:00
Cool. Some Grand Ams had manual seats belts that anchored to the door instead of the frame of the car. Felt like a good reason to lock the doors.
Thanks for this, we never got these here in Australia, and when I've seen pictures of car interiors from around this time I've always wondered just how in the hell they work.
In the case of my 93 legacy (liberty in aus) there's a small brain box for them, a track that runs the vast majority of the window opening, the motor lives in the base of the b pillar and connects to the track with cables that also move the shoulder belt, and there's a separate lap belt.
The shoulder belt reels are in the center console under the storage box as well.
It's a stupid system and commonly ripped out for regular manual belt like everywhere but the states got
Yeah the U.S. is the only country that got them.
I'm watching this like "Cool old Burgerking, wait, Washington St?....is that footage of Naperville??"
thanks for the video. just wanted some info about automatic seatbelts and thats exactly what youve given in an easy to digest and entertaining format.
Motorized shoulder belts were not the only kind of automatic seat belts though. There were also shoulder belts that bucked into the doors and swung out when the doors were opened. Others looked like a regular 3-point seat belt, but were mounted completely on the doors instead of the b-pillar or seat, which people were required to leave buckled in at all times when getting in and out of the car, but it was a real struggle, so most people just used those seat belts manually.
In my 1992 Saturn, when the power seatbelts failed, there was a backup, so it wasn't quite as bad as the video implies. (There was a metal piece you could clip into the track and attach the seatbelt to it. I expect all the cars of that era had a backup? But you could certainly lose that metal piece, too.)
What kind of saturn? SL, SC, or SW?
(Just curious lmao, saturns are my favorite car, and I was watching rhe video going "Man...Weird My Sl doesnt have these..." but my first sl was 97, and my current one is 98 lmao.)
@@joegomez5463 gold ‘92 sw2, so from before GM took over and still had the full on future look. It was a wonderful car, had it for 18 years and it was still running well when I donated it to a technical school. (I didn’t want to part with it, but “had” to after inheriting another car)
@@CodeKujo Not bad at all. They're super underrated cars man. Glad it didnt just go to the Junker lol. I recentley had to do the valve cover swaparoo, since GM thought plastic was a good idea 🥴
My sister had a late 80’s Mercury Cougar with automatic seatbelts in the early 2000’s. Problem was it broke on her side, so she would use the lap belt you manually had to put on, and at this period of time DUI checkpoints were extremely common around where I live. As luck would have it she was driving me home one night, and we came up on a check point. The officer looks over at me with my automatic seatbelt on, then looks at my sister and says “ok where’s your seatbelt”. My sister pointed out she had the lap belt on, but that wasn’t good enough, she got a ticket. Funny thing is after the cop wrote the ticket, he said if I wouldn’t of had my automatic shoulder belt on, and we both would’ve just had the lap belts on, he would’ve just let us go and assume it’s a older car with no shoulder belt. He’d never seen a auto seatbelt before.
I kinda wonder what would’ve happened if she would’ve contested the ticket, cause technically while not as safe, she was wearing a seatbelt.
"I kinda wonder what would’ve happened if she would’ve contested the ticket"
Not sure how this kind of thing works in the US, but where I live the fact that the belt was broken would potentially make the whole thing even worse for her because it's basically neglected maintenance.
You had to have both on, the automatic and the manual lap seatbelt, but people were lazy or had a false sense of safety because of the automatic seatbelt, and neglected to put lap seatbelt on.
I only found your channel today but your videos are really well made! Currently going to binge the whole channel now.LOL
I knew someone who was in a car crash and was decapitated by the automatic seatbelt. I’ve told everyone I’ve ever seen use one to never ever use the feature in the car. And if it’s stuck in the ON position either fix it before riding or simply cut it with a knife.
Nice video. The phrase you might have been looking for, the requirement of the U.S. government is "PASSIVE RESTRAINT." It was met in three ways: 1. GM chose the cheapest, by attaching the belts to the door. In theory, you would have to manever through this web-like mess without hanging yourself. When you closed the door, PRESTO, your seatbelt was engaged. In reality, most people just disconnected it like a regular belt.
2 The electric shoulder harness you discuss, used by Ford and the Japanese makes. The lap belt still had to be manually connected, and it was found that if this was not done, the occupant would "submarine" under the connected shoulder belt, making it ineffective
3. Last and priciest was the "Supplemental Restraint System," commonly referred to as an "airbag." These were installed by Chrysler, to their credit, as these were the most effective system. It's ironic that GM first offerred airbags, or the "Air Cushion" system, as an option on many of their upscale full-size models in 1974! They were soon discontinued as practically no one ordered them. Soon after Chrysler's introduction of the airbags, it was determined that the airbags were most effective if the seat belts were fastened, so you still had to fasten your belt! Plus in the first years of use, only the driver got an airbag; the passenger was out of luck!
Well the first two were hated by most drivers and their passengers, and so all manufacturers eventually switched to airbags. Today you can find vehicles with four, six, even eight or more airbags!
My 2010 Toyota has a whopping 9 airbags, and I think new stuff is up to 12 or more.
The earliest Dodge Vipers also had door mounted seatbelts, though only on USDM cars. Export versions had them mounted to the rear bulkhead, inboard of the seats like in a Lamborghini Diablo.
@@Gordanovich02 Oh, nice. I did not know that. Thanks
@@atlmuscleman Great comment! It really pissed me off how GM always chose the cheap route. The "automatic" seatbelt cheat, the use of 60s technology engines well into the 2000s... and then they acted surprised when they were in dire straights in the late 2000s. 😡🤦🏾♀️
GM skirted the law on cars with full frame doors by attaching the seatbelt to the door so you could in theory leave it buckled and get in/out without having to manually put the belt on. My friend had an 88 Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais like this. Most people used the belts like conventional belts and unbuckled them every time.
I always wondered how they would fare in a crash if the door popped open. I think they had an extra latch at the upper part of the door to try to prevent this but I could still see it happening.
The 3rd Gen prelude actually has a recall on the seat belts not being safe in an accident because the doors can pop open and allow you be ejected from the vehicle iirc
Another reason I never liked GM (aside from slim to zero reliability). They really cheated the system and cheaped out, just as they built updated versions of 60s engines all the way into 2010+
Same... Pontiac Grand Am had these too. Pain in the proverbial @ss when it rained hard and you were trying to get in (especially when you had an umbrella)
This is actually what soured me on GM for probably the next 20 years. I figured if they half-@$$'d passive restraint requirements what else were they half-@$$ing.
@@jamesdelius ummm... Only EVERYTHING ELSE!! (except stereos. They did have the best sounding factory stereos)
My dad designed seatbelts for GM. The engineers liked the automatic seatbelts, along with the ones that were connected to the door so that all three points were automatically in place, because they understood the death toll that could be avoided with seatbelts.
And now that my mom has dementia, I wish we had a car with the seatbelt connected to the door, because trying to get her buckled up is a colossal pain in the ass.
Considering how many people, especially children, have been injured by airbags historically-speaking, I truly wish the automated seatbelts had been further researched and implemented.
@@BluetheRaccoon Agreed. I will admit that I think the laws & culture have done a great job normalizing and requiring seatbelts, and I'm glad for that.
_I remember being a kid and getting into cars with these lol._
5:42 - airbags DID NOT and DO NOT work without a seatbelt!!!
they will kill you if you don't have your belt on and are often disabled when the belt isn't used
And airbags can kill you if your a woman. It's a pet peeve of mine that I have a weight sensor in the seat that disables the air bag if I have no passenger but if my passenger is a petite woman I have to beg to be allowed to disable it..when it could just not trigger below a certain weight.
@@evil1by1 that's possible but she needs to be very petit
Fancy seeing you here.
Nice video.
But can we get an hour long version of you putting the automatic seatbelt on and off?
That sounds like a setup for a very specific OF plug
My 1989 Ford Taurus had the motorized seat belts. Yes, you still had to manually buckle the lap belt, but the motorized portion never failed.
...I wish I could say the same thing about the *four engines* that Taurus burned through.
Yes...I said four. The first one failed while still under warranty. Should have sold it then.
The car that the Mythbusters used to test escaping a sinking car looked EXACTLY like my old Taurus. Except for the fact that we were on opposite coasts, I would have assumed the Mythbusters used my old car.
Not shocked by the motor ordeal. The Taurus has always been a junker.
@@Bl4ckD0g
*T* his
*A* utomobile
*U* sually
*R* equires
*U* nexpected
*S* ervice
I'm 19 and my first car was a 1989 Toyota Camry and it had automatic seat belts and I thought it was a good idea to force people who suffer from attention seeking issues to wear seatbelts until I learned that if you don't buckle up the manual lap belt then you could break your sternum
**CHEST BONE!!**
An honorable mention is the style of seat belts you can find in Some GM Second Gen. J-Bodies. The seat belts were attached to the door itself and not the B-pillar. When you open the door you can exit while the seat belt is still buckled, solving the no automatic lap belt issue. Owning one that has this feature(1994 Chevy Cavalier), I never use it. It just makes it too difficult to get in and out of the car.
I remember my dad used to own a 1990 Corolla that had them, and I don't think they worked by the time we got the car. I was so confused about why they didn't just use normal seat belts. Thank you for the video.
I live in Australia, and I don't ever remember seeing a car with automatic seatbelts. Mind you, the whole seat belt wearing thing is policed very heavily here. In fact the only ticket I've ever had was for not wearing a seat belt. And from then on I have never failed to wear a seatbelt!
They were only produced in the U.S., from mid 80s to mid 90s.
Is your name Art lol
@@pamcolding4279 Yes. I'm in the latex business.
My first introduction to the automatic seatbelt was in 2005 when i was around 5ish years old. My mom owned a Honda Civic DX Sedan (I think that's the car because i do remember it being a honda) and the thing that really stood out about that car was its seat belts. It guess it's also the first time i was introduced to the manual windows.
That's all i really remember about that car. She later sold that car and got a van.
😂😂 that's funny. I was born '89 and I remember two cars like that, one was my neighbor's, just remember it was a Mazda and had the pop up headlights, if I had to guess now that I have some gray in my hair, 😄 it was an early 90s, maybe a 90 or 91, and always wondered as a little boy, what the heck's wrong with your seat belt;) the second time was when I went to a technical college 9 years ago, one of my classmates had a 1991 Toyota Camery.
Automatic seatbelts, manual windows 🤣🤣🤣🤦🏾♀️
We had these on a car my mother owned when I was young. I loved them. Not for any material use. But because it was the first "automatic" thing in a car I had ever seen.
We had to roll our windows up. We didnt have AC. We didnt have an automatic transmission. Everything was bare bones.
And then there was this super high tech machine that placed a seatbelts on me when the car started.
If I ever win the lottery, I will buy a racecar bed and install automatic seatbelts.
Kudos on a straight forward video that actually answered the subject question
My Toyota Tercel had a semi-automatic, non-motorized two-point shoulder seat belt that attached to the door. You still had to connect the lap belt, but at least you had a shoulder belt by default. It was very convenient and it worked great.
Both my 89 and 91 Cressidas seat belts still work. Fun fact, the Cressidas belts pivoted for comfort unlike my old Honda belts which were fixed. But unlike the Honda belts, the Cressida belts don't unbuckle but they do have safety release levers by the ebrake.
I had an 87 Cressida back 15 years ago and could never figure out what the safety release lever was for, when I pulled it the car beeped and some light flashed on the dashboard! The manual wasn't specific for what it did and now it finally explains everything.
That was awesome of Volvo to give other car manufacturers free access to his patented seat belts.
I love when people invent things that can save lives but don't want money for it. They just want to help people live. Like the guy that invented Penicillin.
People can be amazing. These inventions could have made them rich. Lives meant more to them than money. Wish more people and companies were like that. Especially, the drug industry, or just the entire medical industry altogether.
Me too, think of how much more peaceful the world would be if it weren't for the greed of so many companies and individuals particularly CEOs and top executives.
4:12 this sounds strangely familiar.... 2020s something had that same reaction..
I had a Saturn with the seat belt. While it was amusing to see a guest sit in the car without telling them the shoulder would automatically move into place when the door was closed... it wasn't ever an issue and worked well... unlike the engine.
It was also easy to un clip the belt for cargo/passenger manipulation.
I found it novel, well designed, but not necessary. You still needed to use a lap belt in the same way.. Stunt? Feature? Reminder? You tell me?
Congrats on 1M views 🎉
I love this video! Love the presentation, especially for using your own car to demonstrate the automatic seat belt. It really makes your video unique. I’m also very surprised about Mazda’s auto seatbelt recall.
My step-dad had a 1995 saturn sl1 that had an automatic seat belt that broke in an accident and he hit the steering wheel and broke his rib. He continued to drive that car for 3 more years with no engine cooing fan (broke during impact) so the engine would overheat the whole time. Odometer reading was stuck at 150,000 miles for 10 years so the car had roughly 300k-400k miles by the time he was done with it. At some point the chain linkage broke so he had it held together with zip ties that he would replace every week. Eventually he sent the car to the junk yard because it was falling apart, the overheating engine and transmission were still going strong.
So Mazda still has parts for the 80's automatic seatbelts ? That's insane to think about...
Or do they just slap a manual seatbelt in it ?
I had a 1987 Plymouth with this automatic seatbelt. It drove me crazy! It’d always hit me in the head! My Dad installed seatbelts (lap only) in our 1956 Chevy station wagon, along with extra seats in the back. We sat three in the front, four in the back, three more in the way back. It was fine for a number of years so long as we were relatively small, but we later got a Country Squire wagon that was much roomier.
Was hoping to see a mention of GMs even cheaper option where the seatbelt attached to the door and the idea was that it always stayed attached and you got in and slid under the belt. Of course no one used it like this but I’ve been told at dealerships they had to show the cars in this fashion.
The whole seat belt thing reminds me of the masks that some people flat out refused to wear because "it's their choice"
If You dont wear seatbelt, the people in other car will be injured and die while You selfish bastard might get away uninjured. Millenial NPC logic in action. Again.
My first new car was a 88 Ford Tempo with these monstrosities installed. I was mid-20s, and visited my grandparents in my new ride. Grandpa was getting wobbly and very old fashioned. He couldn't figure out the geometry of this auto seatbelt nonsense. As soon as he shut the door (in the passenger side) the seatbelt motor engaged, and proceeded to gouge a massive gash across the top of his melon. Blood was everywhere. An ambulance came. Grandma was hysterical.
Yeah, I've never been a fan since.
I have a 1990 honda accord xl, damn belts work just fine.
Thats amazing that there are still some of these cars out there and the seat belts still work! My very first car was a 91 accord, I had zero problems with it and always loved driving it. When the seatbelt laws started coming out and everyone was complaining about having to wear it I was already good, minus the lap belt lol
@@Carla_78 a ups driver rear ended me a week ago, not one dent. I love this car. Very safe.
@@denisebethany5691 Oh no! Hopefully no one else hits that classic, its probably got a lot of life left in it. They run forever!
Thanks for these super nostalgia inducing videos.