How Much Do You Know about Car Seat Belts?

The car seat belt is a safety device for restraining the occupant during a collision and avoiding a secondary collision from the steering wheel and the instrument panel during collision, or rushing out of the vehicle to cause death or injury. Car seat belt is recognized as the cheapest and the most effective safety device. 

Origin and Development

Seat belts existed before the invention of the car. In 1885, the carriages were commonly used in Europe. The lap-belts at that time were simply to prevent passengers from falling off the carriage. By 1910, seat belts began to appear on the plane. In 1922, the sports car on the racing track began to use seat belts. In 1955, Ford Company began to equip cars with seat belts. The seat belts in this period were mainly two-point seat belts. In 1955, the aircraft designer Niels invented the three-point seat belt after working at Volvo Cars. In 1963, Volvo Cars registered Niels' three-point car seat belts and assembling them on self-produced cars.  In 1968, the United States stipulated that all front-facing seats of cars should be equipped with car safety belts. Developed countries such as Europe and Japan formulated regulations for car occupants to wear seat belts as well. On November 15, 1992, the Ministry of Public Security of China issued a circular stipulating that all passengers and front passengers of small passenger cars (including cars, jeeps, vans, and mini-cars) must use seat belts from July 1, 1993. Article 51 of the Road Traffic Safety Law stipulates that when driving a motor vehicle, the driver and the occupant shall use the seat belt as required. At present, the most widely used is the three-point seat belt.

Three-point Seat Belt

1. ELR Three-point Seat Belt

The ELR three-point seat belt is a three-point seat belt with an emergency locking buckle, and it is usually free to pull out the seat belt. It is equipped with an impact sensor that locks the seat belt during a crash or emergency braking. The jerk will be perceived from the deceleration of the vehicle, or by the pull-out speed of the lifting sling. The combination of this two methods has become the mainstream. 

2. ALR Three-point Seat Belt

The ALR three-point seat belt is a three-point seat belt with an automatic locking retractor. When the belt is pulled out and it fits the length of the occupant's use, it will be locked and can not be pulled out. The ALR three-point seat belts used in combination with ELR has become mainstream. ALR works when the safety belt is pulled out in full and ELR works when the safety belt is pulled back in full. This method is mainly used for the fixing of . 

3. Seat Belt with Pretensioner and Force Limiter

Nowadays, many mid-end to high-end cars are equipped with seat belts with pre-tensioners and force limiters. Pretensioner is used to eliminate excess tension allowance of seat belt as far as possible to avoid the occupant being injured by the explosive airbag. The force limiter is to reduce the tension of seat belt after the peak of the force has passed, so as to reduce the force on the passenger ribs and shoulders.

The first thing to get on the car should be to fasten the seat belt, which is the first rule of safe driving. The importance of car safety belts cannot be ignored.