virsight hearing - Motor Vehicle Hazard Archive Project

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turer that ofrers largp numbers of models, such as Ford or General
MoLors; they have done some pretty extensive analyrir ae to just
which models can and which csn not be properly outftttad with retrofrt
kits.
Mr. Nrrrsox. It was also asserted by the firrt panel that in rome
cases, laponly safety belk may actually contribute t, or ovon caure
injury during an accident. In your experience, is it unurual to hcar
of problems with safety features like that? In other wordr, h it
rather unusual for someone to be downgrading it€ms that you've
found to be safe?
Mr. Mu,r,nn. Well, we try not to downgrade safety systemr, brrt
it's not unusual that a system which ordinarily works well and contributes
to safety, may in some instances, either not provide safety,
or in a rare instance, provide some detriment.
One analogy we frequently use is in the medical community to
vaccines. Vaccines do a wonderful job of insulating us against dieease,
but there are some rare case where vaccines may actually
injure a person. On balance, they are very effective. We feel the
same way about safety belts.
Mr. NmIsoN. It seerns to me like you're treading a very frne line
there, because if you tell people about the danger of using lapbelts
only and the superiority of the shoulder/lap combination, that you
would need to be careful that you don't encourge them to stop
using the lapbelte entirely.
I'm afraid, unless I misread the first panel-I hope they'll forgive
me, but I felt the impression was: "If you haven't got a lap/shoulder
combination, don-t bother." That was the basis on which Ne
braska changed their law, basically.
Mr. Mn lfr. That was dne of th6 factors cited by State officiale in
Nebraska.
Mr. NtnrsoN. Plus the fact that the people thought you shouldn't
try to Iegislate good trehavior.
Mr. Mir,r,rn. That's another issue that surfaces from time to time
as well. I think your analysis there is correct. We do -try to walk
that line carefully so that bven when we tout the added benefrts of
new systems, we do not in any way denieFat€ the demonstrable
benefits of existinq 6vstem6.
We frnd a similir iituation in the front seats. We are very excit'
ed about the added benefits that could be supplied with airbags'
but that does not in any way cause us to weaken our recommendations
for usage of the safety belts that are currently in the front
geats of passenger cars.
Mr. Ftr.ntcr.-Mr. Nielson, if I can just add for a second. A lot of
the potential problems that were mentioned by the earlier panel,
were related lo the misuse of the syst€m. We've been trying as
hard as we can to urge everyone we speak to, to use the syEt€rrg
properly. -
In teims of a lapbelt, wear it on the pelvis. Any safety system'
whether it's a lap6elt, a lap/shoulder belt, an airb-ag; they all, in
some rare circurnstances, can cause injury that would not have otherwise
occurred,
Mr. Nrrrsox. I think you're being unfair to the first panel. They
did say, it's better to have it lower. It secures it bett€r, but if you