The Feds Want Mandatory Seatbelt Warnings For Every Seat

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is laying out another proposal to reduce road accident fatalities that would see seatbelt warning systems made compulsory for all seating positions in modern vehicles.

The agency wants to impose this on vehicles weighing 10,000 pounds or less, including passenger cars, trucks, most buses, and multipurpose passenger vehicles, promoting seatbelt use beyond the driver.

"Wearing a seatbelt is one of the most effective ways to prevent injury and death in a crash," says NHTSA acting administrator Ann Carlson. "In 2021, almost 43,000 people lost their lives on America's roads, and half of those in vehicles were unbelted. This proposed rule can help reduce that number by getting more to buckle up."

While road accident fatality figures have declined, they are still too much. As such, the agency says this proposed rule may prevent approximately 300 non-fatal injuries and over 100 fatalities annually.

This would make sense since the agency's data says that rear belts can reduce the fatality risk by 55% on passenger cars and 74% for light trucks and vans. Front passenger belts, meanwhile, can curb the risk of death by 44% on passenger cars, 63% for light trucks, and 73% for vans.

That said, though, this rule will require the amendment of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 208, aka "Occupant Crash Protection." It only requires manufacturers to install a seatbelt warning device for the driver's seat.

The agency also proposed several requirements on how this belt warning system will work. On startup, a visual cue covering the status of the rear belts should last 60 seconds. The driver should also see and hear a 30-second audio-visual cue if the rear belt is unbuckled.

The front belts though, will be more stringent, because the NHTSA wants to impose a warning that will remain active indefinitely until the driver and front passenger buckle their belts.

Buckling up has been one of the key elements for crash safety in cars since the 1990s, but a seatbelt warning mechanism is yet to be mandated by the NHTSA. Suffice it to say, the agency is way behind schedule with standardizing safety features, and modern technology like that found in EVs is posing new problems current legislation does not cater for.

There's also the fact that many rear seatbelts on cars like the Kia K5, Hyundai Sonata, and Volkswagen Jetta have failed the updated Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) rear seat safety test. The only vehicle that received a good rating in this test is the Honda Accord.

So regardless of any NHTSA ruling or not, carmakers would do well to update and reinforce their age-old seatbelt designs.