Front and Rear Seat Belt Reminders
In 2012 the rear seat belt reminder was passed into law starting in 2015 for all new 2016 models but it did not happen.
In fact by now, had all the seat sensors been in place since then, we would have easily been able to incorporate the rear seat belt buckle-up audio and visual reminder before the vehicle can be physically removed from park, shown above, and added the reminder to unbuckle all seat belts after the vehicle is back in pack, shown below, when any of the doors are opened.
So why has something so straightforward not been done already?
A look back at the NHTSA leadership in 2014 when this should have been made into an official two year notice to all manufacturers, there was a temporary lapse in any leadership. There was no Secretary or Deputy Secretary of the NHTSA in all of 2014.
Followed by two years of leadership by a NHTSA Secretary that was all for less regulation with voluntary compliance. This approach obviously never works for enacting new laws and leads to wide spread safety failures, like not mandating the rear seat belt warning system and not notifying the public of which vehicles do not comply.
To briefly summarize, from the beginning of 2014 (some say even earlier) until the end of 2016 (some say even later) no one did any of the work to enforce public road safety.
Since 2017 to date, we still do not have a Secretary of the NHTSA and a Deputy Secretary can only do so much in an official capacity.
However speaking first hand, we have made some progress under the present administration toward updating the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) Rating System for all 2020 models.
Presently the NHTSA is putting together DOT Testing Standards for all Collision Avoidance Technology to be added into a much clearer NCAP Crash Protection Rating System to include testing passenger safety in every seat.
The NCAP updates and the Rear Seat Belt Reminder are only two of more than a half dozen safety regulation laws that are well overdue.
Congress does not need to rewrite these laws, like presently trying to pass another version of the rear seat belt reminder. Instead congress must focus on making every state comply to the existing seat belt law with no exceptions like New Hampshire that allows over eighteen year old drivers and passengers to not wear seat belts.
It is a federal regulated law that all vehicles sold in the USA must have seat belts for every seat location. It must also be a federal law that everyone must use a seat belt. State law should not be allowed to make any exceptions and only given the authority for the type of enforcement, such as making it a separate driving offence and writing a ticket or not.
Regulating the existing seat belt law on a federal level will lead manufacturers to solutions like I demonstrate here. It will also lead to solutions for distinguishing a passenger by weight from a bag of groceries, that is not buckled in, and when a child is in a safety seat or on a booster seat by adding the buckled seat belt into the design for children under the weight and/or height regulations.
Further manufacturers of child safety seats will be encouraged by these federal regulations to add blue tooth and like over air communications to the people in charge of making sure the child is properly secured before the vehicle moves and to assure they are notified of their presence when the vehicle is back in park via the vehicle to the seat’s phone application.
Congress simply needs to approve the appointment of a new NHTSA Secretary that will enforce all the laws and will perform the role of leadership in ensuring public road safety with the fullest of federal authority as mandated by congress.
To be more specific the NCAP Testing will include seat belt safety and rate how well each manufacturer notifies the driver for everyone to be buckled up before the vehicle can move and further that someone is still buckled in whenever any of the doors are opened after the vehicle is back in park.
It clearly takes regulations to improve our safety but it also takes firm leadership to ensure safety regulation law enforcement. . .
