passive seat belts
Matthew Born (mborn@brynmawr.edu)
Thu, 27 Feb 1997 10:37:44 -0500
At some point, the US Feds instituted yet another "save us from ourselves"
law which required passive safety on the part of auto manufacturers. I
believe 1990 was the magic year. Essentially, if you didn't have an airbag,
you had to have passive belts. This was true for any car sold in the US; my
91 Mi16 did have the passive belts.
The truly wacko part of this was that lots of people who would otherwise
wear belts neglected to use the lap belt, thinking that the automatic
shoulder belt was enough. These folks were then less safe than they would
have been had the government not intervened.
Matthew Born
89 wagon, currently protecting the driveway from the evil effects of the sun.