Seatbelts are only effective in preventing death or severe injury when they are worn and worn properly. However, there are many factors that prevent that from occurring. Some of these are psychological, while some are design related. There are also instances in which seatbelt design eventually proves to be ineffective or actually dangerous. The intent in the following pages is to explore the design and comfort of seatbelts, including children's safety belts.
Although most people would probably guess that seatbelts are a modern device, they have actually existed since the late 19th century, although with different purposes. Originally seatbelts were designed for use in carriages. These horse drawn vehicles suffered from one of the same problems as modern automobiles. During emergencies, passengers tended to be thrown out of the vehicle, leading to serious injury. Thus, the first seatbelts were designed simply to secure the passengers within the horse drawn carriage.
This was primarily the motivation for the use of seatbelts in early automobiles, too. Although there was not as much danger of accidents as there is now, simply because there were not very many other cars, there continued to be the danger of drivers and passengers being thrown out of the vehicle. One of the major problems creating that risk was the state of the roads on which these early automobiles traveled. These were so rough and in such a state of disrepair, that there was a high danger of accidents resulting simply from the road conditions themselves. The seatbelts on these early automobiles were also simply designed to secure passengers within the vehicle.
Although widespread use of seatbelts did not begin until the 1960s, the modern era of seatbelt design and use began in 1949. At that point, Nash was the first of the big automakers to introduce seatbelts as a regular feature of some of its cars, although only as an extra, or option. The only m...