With all the push towards making vehicles more safe, why are seat belt buckles not standard? I would think that if the buckles were standard, it could possibly save lives in an emergency situation.
From my experience, I have often had a difficult time unlatching when in a strange car. If it is night, it is much more difficult.
Has standardization ever been proposed?
It should be… IMO
I’ve only seen 2 different type of seatbelt releases in my lifetime in cars dating back to the 60s and from the U.S., Europe and Japan.
Older cars generally had a button on the face that released the seatbelt and every new car I’ve had since my '94 Saturn had a red button right next to the slot where the buckle plugs in (ignoring the ridiculous automatic shoulderbelt that the Saturn had).
Are there other types of releases that I’ve missed?
While it might save some time, people have problems getting out of their daily driver cars. I’m not sure they are different enough that standardizing would help.
By standardizing you may limit improvements in seatbelt designs. I know some seatbelts have pretensioners (mechanical, electronic, and pyrotechnic) to snug the belts in event of a collision. I’d hate for standards to prevent improvements like this. Granted, you’re talking about the buckles but they might affect the entire belt system.
I’ve only seen those two, the release on the face of the clasp was one I saw a long time ago on a car from the 70s.
The only other one I remember hearing about was on a pre-pre-tensioner seatbelt that Dad had in one of his old British sports cars. It was a harness style arrangement where you tightened the belt around you yourself. And that was quite some time ago.
In the U.S., at least, they are effectively standardized, in function, if not in specific form. To release the buckle, you press a red button. It’s always push-to-release, and it’s always red.
I have six-point racing harnesses for running on the track. Although they are far more substantial and secure than ordinary three-point belts, they are not street legal because they use a twist-release mechanism (on the left in the linked picture). The manufacturer also makes a legal version, with a red pushbutton (on the right).
What does it matter what color the button is? You can’t see the button when you’re wearing the belt–it’s on the side facing away from you. (I suppose you could twist around some way to see it, if you weren’t wearing a seat belt that inhibited your movement.)
The one you linked to looks like it would be much better.
The bright & standard color makes it easy for rescuers to find in a hurry. Also easy for parents to find when dealing with kids both in and out of car seats.
I don’t have any problem seeing the button on my seat belt buckle while the belt is fastened. Neither do lots of other people. I just tilt my head down a smidgen to look towards my hip, and there it is.
Certainly there are extra wide or extra inflexible people who do have that problem.
The ones that give me problems are back seats - the short bit with the “socket” can twist either way around. If you’re not watching carefully when you get into the car, the release button winds up against your hip and under the strap.
In my truck, Chrysler eliminated this by mounting the sockets on stout cables that are too stiff to be easily twisted around. I suspect this isn’t adopted more commonly as it costs more to make up the cable assembly than to just sew the socket to a length of seatbelt webbing.
Or women with breasts.
But would be good is if the buckle assembly was standard so that every person, no matter their size could wear a seatbelt, even if they needed an extender to do so.
Fun fact: Those were mandatory on cars sold in the United States that lacked a driver air bag, since April 1989.
In the early days before shoulder belts became standard, the lap belts weren’t retractable. You buckled it and then tightened it up, pretty much the same way rear seat and center seatbelts worked up until about 10 years ago.
When the shoulder belt was introduced, the GM cars had a separate lap and shoulder belt (shoulder belt was an option). When not in use, the shoulder belt clipped to the headliner above the door. There were 2 or 3 built in clips and you just folded the belt up and stuck it in the clip. In every car I remember riding in with that option, the ceiling clips were permanent storage. Nobody ever used them and they were a pain to take down and put back up.
In all of these cases though, the release was the standard button on the face of the buckle.
I don’t think the '94 Saturn had any other type of shoulder belt available and I did have driver’s side airbag. Those shoulder belts had an emergency release over the shoulder where it attached to the track over the door that seemed like a convenient place for a passenger to grab if the car stopped short. But the way the release worked, if you grabbed and squeezed, it released the belt, sending the passenger headfirst into the dashboard. It happened in my car twice with two different passengers.
I am neither wide nor inflexible, but I’m not very tall. When using the child seat, the release was on the other side of a rather large seat, facing away from me. I could only have seen the color of it if I draped myself over the seat, which of course had a child in it at the time.
I’m not trying to say I had trouble finding and releasing it, just that the color was not helpful in any way at all. Or even visible.