caledoniandream:
Carryfast:
You can ask any european car maker that exports cars to the states to satisfy federal safety standards.It’s been in force for years certainly since the 1970’s so by now everyone’s probably forgotten about the difference.I’ve driven yank cars over there on hire since the 1980’s and they were all fitted with inertia reel type belts with no real noticeable differences to ours other than the width issue.He Carryfast, I cannot find a proof of that anywhere, also when I imported Jeeps from the US of A for export to Italy we had to replace the belts to be able to registrate them, however Italian gear we exported to Canada and the US of A we had to change the bumoers and the lights but never the belts.
But i found a peace in a publication of Volvo about the use of wider belts, and they don’t see much improvement in a wider belt, first of all they are more uncomfortable, because they fold easier, look at the lower bit of your seat belt if you undo him, maybe you are superslim and have a square figur, but my belly squeezes the belt double. The other reason Volvo (inventor of the seatbelt in production vehicles) that the force is concentrated in the middle of the belt and that there is less spread than we assume.
Have a read of their story
Translation shouldn’t be a problem for yourself
Veranderingen in de gordels zelf
Zowel Volvo als tal van andere autofabrikanten maken vandaag de dag gebruik van veiligheidsgordels van een klein aantal toeleveranciers. Daarbij kunnen er geringe verschillen zijn in de technische details van de gordels, maar hun structuur en breedte zijn gelijk. Men zou zich kunnen voorstellen dat een bredere gordel een betere bescherming biedt. Echter, aangezien de kracht zich gewoonlijk in het midden van de gordel concentreert, levert de extra breedte slechts een marginaal voordeel op. Bovendien is het comfortabeler, zeker voor vrouwen, om een smallere gordel diagonaal over de borst te dragen.
I managed to translate about three words but forget the rest that’s probably why they usually speak English because it’s easier But the yanks seem to have forgotten about their own old rules and they now seem to have been consigned to the scrap yard together with most of the big cars they built.The regs as they seem to stand at 2002 seem to say not less than 46 mm width which seems about the same as what we’ve got in most cars.But if the force is concentrated in the centre of the belt then the same would apply to race spec belts which are definitely a lot wider than 46 mm.But I can remember that old difference being well known some years ago and logically it seems to be a better idea to spread the contact loads across more of the bone structure.