I’m not sure when seat belts became standard equipment. I remember my dad installing them in his new cars. He actually removed the old seat belts before trading in the old car. The old belts got installed in his new car.
My dad was an early adopter. His experience in the Navy made him believe in seat belts. He was installing them in his cars in the mid 1950’s.
If I’m driving my newly restored 1964 Chevy Impala, am I exempt from seat belt laws?
(I’d install them anyhow. But lets say I wanted the car completely factory stock)
I’ve seen many a classic car parade, and most of the drivers are not wearing seatbelts. Given that there are police cars everywhere during these events, I’m sure they must be exempt in Massachusetts and Rhode Island at least.
The car is required to have whatever safety standards were in place at the time of its manufacture. Seat belts were not mandatory in 1964. You don’t need air bags either.
I have a Model T. It does not have seat belts, brake lights, or blinkers, and by modern standards its brakes totally suck. But it is perfectly road legal.
As usual this may vary by state, but usually if the car was made before seat belts or harnesses were required as standard equipment you don’t have to add them. But if someone has added them in a retro-fit you are required to wear them.
Any vehicle not required to be equipped with safety belts or safety harnesses at the time the vehicle was manufactured, unless safety belts or safety harnesses have been installed in the vehicle.
IIRC, 1968 was when shoulder belts were first required for the front seats. Lap belts were required earlier than that. I think a 1964 car would have had lap belts, but not shoulder belts.
My 1968 Plymouth Satellite had separate belts for the lap and shoulder. The shoulder belt didn’t have a retractor but could be clipped up into the ceiling above the door glass.
My dad had a '58 Pontiac Pathfinder (Canadian Pontiac). It did not have seat belts. After that he had a '64 Rambler and it had seat belts in the front. After that, a 69 Pontiac Strato Chief. It had seat belts front and rear and separate shoulder harness. The shoulder harness was a PITA because it did not “retract” meaning once strapped in you could not reach certain dash controls such as the head light switch unless you “unbuckled”.
To the best of my knowledge, our jurisdiction requires that you use the seat belts but only if the car is so equipped. However, if the car came from the factory with seat belts and they were removed you were required by law to have them reinstalled.
My first car was a 1965 Land Rover with no seatbelts, I think the UK required them in the front from 1966.
UK laws are the same as the Oregon ones above. If you fit them, you must wear them and you can’t remove them later.
I got stopped by the police twice for not wearing a seatbelt and had fun explaining the law to the officers.
Although not that early, my father, who was a navy aviator in WWII as well, was installing seat belts in the early 60s. There was some incident that triggered it but darned if I remember what it was. These were the old fashioned belts, with teeth in the buckle gripping the thick nylon(?) lap belt, rather than the newer three-point, metal-on-metal catches.
I remember him drilling holes in the floor pan and crawling under the car with the anchors, nits, and fender washers before attaching the lap belt. He was delighted a couple years later when, repeating the process with a new car, he discovered the manufacturer had spotwelded better anchors to the frame.
I had a 61 Falcon in Indiana, and had the choice of registering it as a classic vehicle, or an ordinary road vehicle. In the first case, there were lots of limitations regarding how and where I could drive it, and when, and most importantly, how many miles a year I could put on it (I think it was 500). I didn’t have to make any safety modifications.
If I registered it as an ordinary vehicle, I had to fit it with seatbelts, and if the body style required, a passenger side window (not sure what “body style required” meant, but I assume it had something to do with how much the rearview was obscured). If it were possible to fit the front seats with shoulderbelts, I had to fit it with those, and if I wanted to use a carseat, I had to put in rear seatbelts (wearing rear seatbelts was not required in the state at the time, and you didn’t have to have them, but not having them was not a reason to put an infant seat in the front).
So the answer here, at least at the time was, “it depends.” Probably still is. It’s a pretty safe bet that Indiana will be the last state where gasoline cars are legal.
Within certain conditions, I assume. My uncle has a Model T, and he’s not allowed to take it on the highway. Also he’s not supposed to have small children as passengers because there’s no way to fit a safety seat. Other than stuff like that, yeah, he tootles around as much as he wants.
I think model year 1968 they were required. But model year 1966 was when most, if not all, US makers had factory installed belts. So if your state has a seat belt law you are required to wear them even though your car is pre-1968.
Interesting side note- When my kids were little I inquired to the State Patrol about car seats in older cars with children riding in the car. I was told that the kids needed to be in car seats per the law but because the car did not come with seats belts the car seats themselves did not need to be buckled in. Didn’t make much sense so I added seat belts to the back seat (grade 8 bolts with oversized washers) but then was told this was illegal because I installed the seat belts when the car wasn’t engineered for them. I left them in.
This is how it was in California, and it’s how I’ve assumed it is here in Washington. I did put seat belts in my '66 MGB. The way I drive they keep me from sliding around on the leather seat.
Colonel John Stapp, who popularised Murphy’s Law (named after Captain Edward Aloysius Murphy) was one of the people responsible for mandatory seat belts in cars [link].
His campaign to improve aviation and auto safety had already borne fruit in 1955 with the beginnings of what was to become the Stapp Automobile Safety Conference, an information-sharing symposium that became a yearly event. On September 9, 1966, Dr. Stapp was present as President Lyndon Johnson signed the Highway Safety Act of 1966, requiring seat belts in all new cars sold in the United States beginning in 1968.
Anyway, now I have the limerick from A Boy And His Dog (1975) in my head.
On the other hand, passengers could fall asleep in non-retractable seat belts without potentially slumping over into the driver or the dashboard (or the back of the front seat or another passenger, though I don’t remember how much that style overlapped with rear seat shoulder belts.)
– My sister and BIL, also early seatbelt adopters, had both lap and shoulder belts installed, during the 1960’s IIRC, in a 55 Chevy. They did so by also installing a rollbar; and the belts were 4 point racing car belts. Most comfortable shoulder belts I ever wore – they fit anybody, short or tall, including people with breasts; because instead of one belt crossing one’s torso (and possibly neck), there were two, one on each side, which could be arranged inside or outside the breasts (I’ve forgotten which, I only remember that they didn’t land on top of the breasts.)
In PA there’s no specific law banning antique vehicles from highways, but highways do have a minimum speed that is well beyond the Model T’s capabilities. The law also says that you can’t drive so slowly as to impede traffic, which the Model T would certainly do on a highway.
A Model T will do about 40 mph on flat ground. I’m not sure exactly how fast I’ve had mine going because it doesn’t have a speedometer, but 40-ish mph is probably a good guess. There were aftermarket speedometers made for the Model T back in the day but they were never standard equipment. But if you hit even the slightest hill, the speed drops dramatically. Trying to drive a Model T on a highway would be suicidal.
Since mine has its original lighting (two crappy headlights and one tiny tail light, no brake light, no blinkers), I am restricted to driving it during daylight hours. My 1974 Beetle is also registered as an antique, but because it has a full set of modern lights I’m allowed to drive it after dark. Since the Beetle is capable of highway speeds (if just barely) I can take it onto the highway if I want. It’s not restricted from highway use just because it’s an antique.
In PA you’re not allowed to drive a car registered as a classic or an antique vehicle as a daily driver. Classic vehicles are required to have a standard safety inspection once a year. Antique vehicles don’t ever have to be inspected. Both classic and antique vehicles are exempt from emissions inspections.
