Why Did Car Manufacturers Stop Using Automatic Seat Belts?

Curious what an automatic seatbelt even is? Well, you must be on the younger side. These were pretty common in the late 1980s into the 1990s. You’d sit down in your car, shut the door, and an automatic belt would be strapped across you. You’d then have to buckle the separate lap belt into place — automatic was a bit of an exaggeration.  

The federal government didn’t require seatbelts until 1968 — it wasn’t something you automatically thought about when you sat in a car around that time. By 1981, only 11% of drivers were using a seatbelt at all. Cars also didn’t even have airbags — they were still a bit of a mystery. To reduce the number of deaths on the road, the Transportation Department proposed a regulation that would require all vehicles to have some form of automatic protection by 1984. 

There was a lot of pushback over this requirement at first, largely from automakers. It was delayed multiple times over the backlash, but eventually they had to choose their form of automatic protection, either the automatic seatbelt or the airbag. Many automakers in the late ’80s went with the automatic seatbelt since it was cheaper to implement. Who even knew how those airbag things would work at the time, anyway?

Remember how the automatic seatbelt wasn’t all that automatic? Yeah, that eventually became a problem. Raymond Peck, Head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the ’80s, felt that drivers would simply disconnect the chest belt and not even bother with the lap one. He stated: “Our latest survey evidence shows that there is a clear possibility that the automatic aspect of the new system could not only fail to increase usage but could itself create negative public reactions.” 

By 1987, only 28.6% of drivers were clicking the lap belt. Drivers and passengers continued to get killed in car accidents at an alarming rate. Nationwide Insurance Co’s Ted Rodgers questioned why airbags were not required instead, pointing at the continued highway deaths. 

Well, eventually, they were, but it took until 1998. Better late than never, right? With automakers forced to implement airbags, coupled with automatic seatbelts not working as intended, most models started arriving without them. Vehicle safety has continued to improve as technology expands — it’s hard to even imagine a time when airbags were seen as overpriced and complicated, causing carmakers to avoid them by offering automatic seatbelts. Oh, and new seatbelts will still save your life due to continuously advancing technology — definitely use them, even if it’s not the law.