Untangling Seatbelts

December 1999 - Untangling Seatbelts

by Richard H. Middleton, Jr. & Leah S. Guerry

When President Clinton announced his seatbelt initiative in 1997, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) started telling people to buckle their children under age 12 in the back seat of cars. Increased volume in back seats may mean NHTSA will eventually have to re-examine its seatbelt requirements.

Currently, the agency requires that the two front seats and rear window seats (called outboard seats) are fitted with a lap/shoulder combination belt, also called a three-point belt. The only seat in most models of cars without a lap/shoulder belt is the rear center seat.

"The NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) has urged us to require the three-point belt, but we've said, it's a very rarely occupied position," says Clarke Harper, chief of NHTSA's light duty vehicle division. He adds, "We would support companies who want to put the three-point belt in that area."

Most cars are still manufactured without a rear center lap/shoulder belt. However, some 1999 models of Acura, Bentley, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lincoln, Lexus, Mazda, Mercedes, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Saab, Toyota, Volvo and VW do have the three-point rear center belt. In fact, Volvo started offering a rear center three-point belt as an option in 1987 — two years before NHTSA began mandating shoulder harness systems for the rear outboard seats.

In order to make it easier for manufacturers to voluntarily place a lap/shoulder harness in the rear center seat, NHTSA altered some of its testing requirements. Prior to the change, manufacturers who installed a rear center lap/shoulder harness had to comply with a test structured for a lap-only belt. Manufacturers would then run a second test on the three-point system.

At this point, Harper says the agency has crash data about lap/shoulder belts on rear outboard seats, but not for center seats. The problem, explains another NHTSA employee, is that there aren't many car models with rear center lap/shoulder belts, and people generally do not sit in that seat.

Attorney James Murphy, of the Milwaukee firm Murphy, Gillick, Wicht & Prachthauser, believes NHTSA should require the lap/shoulder belts for all seating positions.

"It's been recognized by the medical profession and those interested in motor vehicle safety that lap belts can cause death and serious injury.When it is very clear there is a hazard and it's clear there is a solution to remove that hazard, the government should act," says Murphy.

One of Murphy's clients was severely injured -- while sitting restrained with a lap belt in the rear center seat -- in a vehicle crash. All of the other occupants of the car who were wearing a lap/shoulder combination -- and even the one person who was not belted at all — were not as severely injured as the client who was wearing the lap-only belt.

Murphy says the NTSB has yet to act, even though the agency concluded the following after its 1986 study of lap belts in frontal crashes:

q It may be argued that the center front and center rear seating locations in passenger cars have the lowest rates of occupancy, and that therefore it is not warranted to provide the superior protection of lap/shoulder belts at these locations. The safety board believes that, to the extent these seating locations are used, their occupants deserve crash protection equal to those provided for other occupants.

Murphy also says that some manufacturers still claim that the lap-only belt in the rear center seat is just as effective as a three-point belt. The Milwaukee attorney also says manufacturers argue that since the center rear seat (and center front seat) are not often occupied, it does not make good economic sense to provide the three-point belt in those positions. However, according to Murphy, Nissan Motor Co., wrote to NHTSA, stating that the cost for installing lap/shoulder belts in center seat positions would only increase the retail cost by $25 for sedans, $48 for wagons and hatchbacks and $166 for vans. Those prices certainly do not seem too high, considering the benefit -- increased safety for our families.

Richard H. Middleton, Jr., president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, is a partner in the Savannah, GA, law firm of Middleton, Mathis, Adams & Tate, P.C.

Leah S. Guerry is the executive director of the Louisiana Trial Lawyers Association.

Reprinted with permission of Louisiana Trial Lawyers Association, P. O. Box 4289, Baton Rouge; (225) 383-5554 or (800) 354-6267.