How hard is it to disable or adjust a seat belt load limiter to improve safety?

Huh? School buses may be involved in fewer accidents, but that does not mean the occupants are safer.

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To put things more clearly, if you crashed a 90s car that has a stronger airbag and no load limiter at 50 to 55 MPH in a full overlap crash in to a barrier, the injuries to the crash dummy should be less severe than the same test done to a more recent vehicle with weak load limiters such as the example Honda CR-V above. It’s a simple situation where the vehicle is optimized for the 40 MPH IIHS crash test, and to reduce injuries in lower speed crashes.

You need proof? Well I can’t find any. It seems that nobody has ever done such a crash with either a crash dummy or a high speed camera inside the vehicle that I could find. The only thing that comes close is 5th Gear crashing a car in to a tree in the middle at 55 MPH and it held up well. The airbags didn’t bottom out and it looks like the had some kind of dummy in there. I don’t know if any technical data exists. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWegXQ81TKw If you look at 20 seconds in there is a picture of a right side high speed crash where the left seat person would survive like I was talking about in another thread, but since this is the UK the right is actually the driver’s side so it’s still not an example of a passenger side crash. But if you have an older car and you get hit on the driver’s side the passenger and those seated in the rear should have a better chance of surviving compared to a more modern stronger car that has weaker airbags and load limiters.

My own story, 45 mph illegal immigrant the light was green and I turned left and he hit me. So no seat belt, no airbag, bruised my knee on the light switch, sprained my little finger somehow, and cracked the windshield with my forehead. Nothing long lasting as far as injuries. Trans column shiftier was near the bottom of the steering wheel. His wife ended up in the hospital, not saying anything one way or another, just relating my story.

So there are two possibilities: the highly qualified engineers/designers who are experts at this are putting out bad designs and you’re right, or the reverse. I know my vote.

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@TheWonderful90’s ( Formally the Invisable Snowman ) just stop allready and find something else .

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Could we get that lucky?

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if you ignore him maybe he will go away. LOL

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We can only hope I skip over any posts he makes.

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I still don’t understand this. So the immigrant’s light was green and you were at fault making a left in front of the illegal on a green? If you were going 35 MPH at impact and the immigrant was going 10 that’s 45 MPH combined which is equivalent to a crash of only 23MPH if both vehicles are the same weight.

They’ve put out good designs that do well in the 40MPH moderate overlap crash test. The vehicle performance also looks good to the uninformed spectator of the crash test. Overall fatalities in cars are reduced according to the NHTSA seat belt load limiter study. But I believe this is due to significantly reduced fatalities in the elderly and frail segment of the population in <40MPH crashes, but a less significant increase in fatalities in the younger healthier segment of the population results.

Unless you’re in the business of selling cars, or you like to live with a sense of security while driving that may be false, I don’t see what the big deal is. Maybe you’re old enough to be in the category with the load limiters help keep you safer anyway. If you’re not, there’s a potentially cheap modification that will improve the safety of your vehicles (aside from the Volvo). Look at the 10th gen Ford F150 that got a poor rating by IIHS. It’s known that many vehicle makers put minimal effort in to safety. Why is this such a surprise?

I was traveling on a 4 lane road at 45mph and the light was green, he turned as I was proceeding thus I hit his car. let me know if this is not clear enough. I turned and he hit me was his quote. Got my deductible back a year later as he was ticketed uninsured and paid off damages.

Every time I think I’ve already seen the goofiest possible question…

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Stick around they can and will get goofyer with this OP.

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Now I understand! “I turned left and he hit me” needs to be in quotes otherwise it seems that you’re saying I turned left and he hit me as if you made a left on a green in to traffic!

Old Car vs Modern Car during Crash Test / Evolution of Car Safety - YouTube Jump to the 1998 versus 2018 Ford Fiesta crash at 3m09. Not withstanding the opinion of the man talking, this is about the only honest old versus new crash that I could find. The newer car weighs only 100 pounds more, and the old one comes with an airbag. Both drivers should survive, but the one in the 1998 Fiesta would have serious lower body injuries. If they crashed a 98 Fiesta in to another 98 Fiesta things would look a lot better.

40% moderate overlap crash speculations:
40 MPH 98 Fiesta versus 98 fiesta = both survive with some injury
45 MPH 98 Fiesta versus 98 fiesta = both survive with some more injury, possibly serious. A taller larger driver would be positioned farther back from the steering wheel and would receive less injury.
50 MPH 98 Fiesta versus 98 Fiesta = both seriously injured or dead
55 MPH 98 Fiesta versus 98 Fiesta = Both dead for sure.

40 MPH 18 Fiesta versus 18 fiesta = both survive with almost no injury
45 MPH 18 Fiesta versus 18 fiesta = both survive but with some head and neck injury if the driver is a larger person.
50 MPH 18 Fiesta versus 18 fiesta = both should survive with head and neck injury. If the driver is a larger person, there would be serious head and neck injury and possible death.
55 MPH 18 Fiesta versus 18 fiesta = Serious head an neck injury but both probably dead if the driver is a larger person. A smaller lighter person could survive with some injury.

45 MPH 98 Fiesta versus 18 Fiesta = Possibly some injury for the 2018 Fiesta driver, most likely dead in the 1998 Fiesta unless the seat was positioned all the way back.

45 MPH 1995 Ford F-150 verus 18 Fiesta = 1995 F-150 over rides the bumper and scalps the 2018 Fiesta, killing the driver of the Fiesta instantly. The F-150 driver has moderate to serious injuries.

That statistic is not based on accident frequency but on death and injury rates.

http://www.ircobi.org/wordpress/downloads/irc15/pdf_files/21.pdf

This is quite awful. In the 40 MPH IIHS moderate overlap crash in to a deformable barrier test the test dummies actually bottomed out the airbag and contacted the steering wheel during the crash tests. There is no deformable barrier in real life and people drive over 50 MPH in real life.

I don’t see how anyone who knows about this can feel safe driving on a highway in a vehicle with seat belt load limiters.

I don’t feel safe knowing there are people like you on the road.

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From your linked report:

Limitations of Analysis
This study specifically intended to seek out and present cases that illustrate when forward excursion allowed by load limiters can be problematic. As such, the results are not intended to suggest that any additional forward excursion allowed by the inclusion of a load limiter in a particular broadly described crash mode (e.g. frontal impacts) would be undesirable, but rather highlights and describes kinematics that may be observed in specific circumstances.

In other words, any system will have edge cases in which bad outcomes happen. This does not mean we just throw our hands up and say “oh well, guess we scrap the whole thing!”

You can probably find an edge case in which someone was trapped in a burning car because the seat belt would not release. You could then argue that because the seat belt had a latch, that person died. It would be foolish to then conclude that we should eliminate latching seat belts from cars.

Further, the airbag bottoming issue highlighted in the report was based on analysis of older systems (2006 and earlier, as far back as at least the 90’s) and the report specifically notes that the load limiters in use at that time have been replaced with better technology which eliminates steering wheel impacts.

You can’t just half-read reports and cherry pick the half-data that supports your claims, because one of us will come along and read the rest of the report, and then embarrass you. :wink:

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Sorry Mr. Shadow , but I don’t think the Snowman can be embarrassed.

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What about the one where the load limiter spooled out all the way, then the seatbelt detached and then the driver was thrown out of the vehicle and killed?

You know perfectly well that there are older vehicle like this still on the road. People should know about this. The changes to the load limiters were partially in response to the IIHS small overlap crash tests intruduced 2012, where the driver crash dummy often misses and passes the airbag on the left side.