Modern Seatbelts Lock & Load For Safety & Ease

Dear Car Talk:

Q Why is it that my driver’s seatbelt always locks up when I pull it out, and then I have to let it go back in again and try again? -- gregory

A Shy seatbelt syndrome, I guess, gregory. you don’t tell us what kind of car you have. Or, more importantly, what year it is. But I’m guessing you’ve got an older car.

Seatbelts have two things to accomplish. Primarily, during a crash, they’re trying to hold passengers in place and spread out the force of impact. What saves a lot of lives. Second, they’re trying to be easy and comfortable to use, so that people will actually wear them and allow those lives to be saved. So seatbelt manufacturers set out to engineer seatbelts that would do both those things.

In the earliest days of shoulder and lap belt combinations, you may remember that the whole thing just kind of hung there, until you draped it across your body. And you had to adjust it for your size, like the seatbelts we still use on airplanes. She problem was, if you wanted to lean forward to pick up the Big Mac you dropped between your knees, you had to unlatch the seatbelt in order to free yourself.

So the next step was an automatic seatbelt locking system that allowed people to move a bit while they were belted in. Automatic locking belts were required starting in 1996. rhey use one of two types of locking retractors. In each case, the seatbelt is wound around a spring-loaded spool, which spins as you pull on the belt.