Fleets Go For Seat Belts

A fleet salesman was driving his car down a Milwaukee street when it veered slightly, a wheel struck the curb and the front left side door swung open. The driver fell out and bounced helplessly to the ground. He was dead on arrival at the hospital. Cause of death: Fractured skull.

Two weeks later, on a dark country road, a Wisconsin traffic patrol squad shrieked after a fugitive at speeds close to 100 m.p.h. Another car blundered out of a side road and the patrol car slanted off the side of the road, struck a util­ity pole, spun through a field and back onto the highway, upside down. But the patrolman inside crawled out and finished his tour of duty in another car.

The above two accidents-when life and death were very close together-vividly illustrate a point. Seat belts do save lives. The fleet salesman wasn't wearing a seat belt. He died. The highway patrol officer was wearing a belt. He lived. Only a seat belt separated the two.

Like motherhood and the flag, safety belts in cars are rapidly becoming something that everybody is for. Safety experts constantly hammer away at the value of seat belts. States are passing legislation requiring the installation of seat belts. The auto industry, by providing anchors, has made seat belt installation relatively easy and inexpensive. Still it is not enough.

It is estimated that only 7.2 per cent of all the cars now on the road are equipped with seat belts. While the figure is nearly double the 3.3 per cent estimate of a year ago, it is still shamefully low. All cars on the road should be equipped with seat belts.

FLEETS RATE HIGH

Fortunately, fleets are doing a much better job of equipping their cars with life-saving seat belts.

Automotive Fleet  conducted a first-of-its-kind survey on the use of seat belts among passenger car fleets and found that an amazing 65 per cent of the cars in the survey had seat belts. Another 10 per cent of the cars will have seat belts by the end of this year and another 12 per cent by the end of 1965!

A total of 211 questionnaires were sent out to selective fleets across the country and 90 fleets re­sponded. The 90 fleets represented more than 100,000 cars with an average mileage of 20,000 miles per year.

The Automotive Fleet survey clearly in­dicated that utilities lead the way in installing seat belts with taxi firms bringing up the rear. The rental and leasing companies started late in the use of seat belts but are catching up fast.Actually, the high per cent of fleets using seat belts is not so amazing considering that the typical fleet is run by a professional, safety conscious in­dividual who is responsible for a great number of cars. The professional fleet manager who chooses seat belts over other types of optional equipment realizes that his driver produces revenue for his com­pany and the extra cost is well worth the investment.

In terms of use, the survey indicated that most fleet drivers use the belts in their cars. However, there was a strong indication that government operated fleets are not stressing the importance of the use of seat belts. A possible reason for this is that many government fleets engage in short trip "in" and "out" urban driving. This is a dangerous trend since statistics show that more than half of all injury-producing accidents occur in urban areas. Three out of four traffic deaths occur within 25 miles of the point of original departure and more than half of all accidents involving injury or death occur at speeds of less than 40 miles per hour.

The trend toward the increased use of seat belts-among both the passenger car fleet and the private motorist-is the direct result of education and legis­lation.

Fifteen states and the District of Columbia now have laws requiring seat belts in new cars. Wiscon­sin had the first such law, beginning with the 1962 model car year. Mississippi and Virginia followed for 1963. Laws requiring seat belts will become effective at the start of either the car model year or the calen­dar year 1964 in Georgia, Indiana, Minnesota, Ne­braska, New Mexico, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Washington and Vermont. Michigan and New York have laws on the book that will take effect in 1965. In addition, the state legislatures of a dozen other states currently are considering mandatory seat belt installation legislation.

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While legislation undoubtedly has aided the cause of seat belts, it has not been enough. Even though it has been made easy to install seat belts and even though laws have been passed requiring the installa­tion of belts, it is impossible to force a driver to buckle his seat belt once he gets into the car. In­tense education is needed to make fastening the seat belt just as automatic as turning on the ignition.

There are three types of drivers on the road: Those who use seat belts whenever they are behind the wheel; those who drive without seat belts; and those who have belts in the car but use them sparingly. Unfortunately, the latter two groups, including a great number of fleet drivers, are far in the majority.

The quickest way for a fleet manager to increase the use of seat belts in his fleet is to prove that seat belts do save lives. And that a seat belt on a seat can't possibly save lives.

THREE REASONS WHY

Fleet managers should emphasize that the use of seat belts is invaluable because:

1. A seat belt helps prevent a driver from being thrown forward with sudden and lethal force against a windshield or instrument panel.

2. A seat belt helps to keep the driver inside the car. A recent Cornell University study on automotive accidents showed that 12.8 per cent of car occupants ejected through open doors were killed while only 2.6 per cent of those who remained inside the car were killed.

A seat belt keeps the driver behind the wheel in case of accident. Behind the wheel he stays in control of the car in case of crash or unexpected swerve and avoids further accident.

Many drivers refuse to wear seat belts because of a belief that belts can cause serious injury, especially pelvic injuries. This "seat belt syndrome" has been successfully refuted by Cornell's automotive crash research project.

Cornell was able to take from several thousands of case histories a total of 150 accidents where there was injury to the area of the abdomen or the pelvis or upper portions of the lower extremities. When a seat belt was used, the majority of these injuries were only sprains or contusions. Out of the 150 cases, there were eight lumbar spine fractures, four cases of intra-­abdominal injuries and four pelvic fractures.

P. W. Braunstein, a surgeon working on the Cornell project, said that the number of injuries sustained was not extremely high when compared to the normal control series-the expectancy of injuries which would be sustained without the use of seat belts.

"However, there was one point in which we are quite interested," Braunstein said. "That was the number of spine fractures which were flexion type of fractures of the lumbar spine and brought on by acute flexion of the trunk."

"It was felt that possibly the restraint of the belt on the pelvis was causing the trunk to flex over the pelvis and so cause these injuries. However, on care­ful examination of the mechanics of the accidents, it was noted that all these accidents were high speed accidents in which the car rolled off the road and then fell a long distance, with the car landing on its wheels and with the occupant being forcibly flexed by the fall."

Dr. Braunstein said the Cornell study showed that seat belts could not be "indicted" as the cause of pelvic-type injuries-that a seat belt was "a restrain­ing device that by itself did not cause injury."

"It was our further conclusion that while injuries may be sustained with the belt being used, the incidence of injuries was less, the severity of injuries was less and that certainly one was safer with a belt than without a belt," Braunstein said.

Fleet drivers should not be lulled into the false sense of security that they don't need a seat belt if they do most of their driving at low speeds. The mathematics of deceleration show that even at low speeds crashes can be dangerous. The standard used is the "g" force. One "g" is equal to the force of gravity.

A car traveling at 60 m.p.h. and stopped in 15 feet by running into a dense thicket of rose bushes suffers a deceleration peak of only 8 "g" while a car stopped in one foot-the distance between bumper and engine block-needs only to be going 15 m.p.h. to suffer de­celeration of 8 "g."

Or take another example. A car hitting a bridge abutment at only 35 MPH achieves a dangerously destructive deceleration peak of 59 "g." Statistics gathered by the American Medical Assn. show that a motorist with adequate safety belt protection can crash a bridge abutment at 40 MPH and suffer a deceleration of less than 30 "g." At 50 MPH the deceleration force is less than 40 "g"-which is survivable and should result in no serious injury.

The important thing to stress to fleet drivers is that the occupant is decelerated against his seat belt and not against the dash board, the windshield or the steering wheel.

Even should the belt break in a high speed crash with a high "g" peak, it will have already sharply reduced the impact by absorbing 5,000 pounds of force under current belt standards set by the Society of Automotive Engineers. Belts used in military air­craft are specified to withstand 8,000 pounds of force.

It should be pointed out that while it is desirable to use only belts which meet SAE standards, any belt is better than none. A 3,000 pound belt can save many lives by holding the driver in his seat in the relatively low-speed intersection crashes in town, preventing his ejection from the car and prevent many deaths that occur after ejection by lethal blows on curbs or trees or by being run over by his own car or other cars at the scene.

Hence, even if a belt breaks it has already done its job. And the Cornell study shows that only two in every 100 belts involved in crashes broke.

EXAMPLES PROVE POINT

One of the most effective, yet tragic ways to im­prove the use of seat belts among fleets is to publicize accidents where drivers were relatively uninjured be­cause they were wearing seat belts-or where they were killed because they didn't use seat belts. While it is difficult to capitalize on human misfortune, such publicity clearly demonstrates the value of seat belts. Many companies play up such accidents in their house organs.

B. L. Groser, fleet manager of Lever Brothers Co., told AF of one such case which greatly increased the use of seat belts in employees' cars.

A Lever Brothers salesman was driving on a two lane Texas highway when he was forced off the road by an approaching car passing on a curve. His car hit a concrete culvert, went through the air for about 30 feet and hit the opposite side of a creek bank.

Groser said the driver crawled out of his car, made his way back to the highway and next remembers wak­ing up in the hospital. He suffered facial lacerations, bruises and a wrenched back but was back to work within three weeks. His car was a total wreck.

"Accident investigators are of the opinion that our operator owed his life to the seat belts that Lever Brothers has provided for him," Groser said. "We ran the pictures in our house organ showing that it is important that everyone have seat belts and offering seat belts for employees' personal car. We, of course, received a deluge of orders."

Groser said that Lever Brothers has equipped company cars with two front seat belts as a manda­tory item for the past 18 months "and there have been four or five cases where the man is still alive today because of the seat belts."

SAE REVISIONS

In a new development in the battle for increased use of seat belts, the Society of Automotive Engineers has completely revised and upgraded its stand­ards for belts and for the first time has issued specifications for shoulder or chest restraining harnesses popular in Europe. The SAE action is significant because a majority of the 20 or so states which have laws regulating the quality of belts sold follow the SAE standards and testing procedures.

The revision of standards is especially significant for advocates of the safety harnesses, which generally consist of the familiar lap strap coupled with one or two shoulder straps. None of the states have stand­ards for such harnesses, and in the case of California, lack of such standards has prohibited their use.

The first SAE seat belt standards were published in 1954. This is the sixth revision. Minimum strength requirements for the belt webbing have been in­creased from 4,000 pounds to 5,000 pounds and more stringent buckle standards are included which will prevent false latching.

Additionally, standards have been revised on re­traction devices for the belts. These are intended to keep the belts neatly stored when not in use. Most are spring-loaded and often allow a user to assume he is tightly belted whereas he feels merely the spring tension.

The AF survey pointed up one distressing fact. More than 16 per cent of the responding fleets were not certain that the belts they use meet SAE specifications. A fleet manager has an obligation beyond getting management to approve seat belts and his drivers to wear the belts. It is his duty to see that the belts meet acceptable standards. It should be pointed out that while government fleets do not use specific SAE standards, they use General Service Administration specifications, which, up until the SAE revision, were more rigid.

The survey also revealed that less than one third of the responding fleets ordered their belts by brand name, taking the chance that they were buying belts that didn't meet SAE standards. However, this is be­coming less important and there is a definite trend toward installed belts and all OEM belts meet SAE requirements.

The fact that 24 per cent of the responding fleets reported that they install their own belts indicates that many fleet managers feel they can get belts from a jobber or wholesaler at a lower price, cutting out the factory or dealer profit. However the cost factor may diminish as the use of seat belts increase and the factory price comes down.

STANDARD EQUIPMENT

In fact, there is a good chance that seat belts will become standard equipment on all Detroit-produced cars by the start of the 1964 model year. Detroit sources say that automakers are considering such a move, possibly to counteract some of the adverse reaction on the renewed emphasis on speed, racing and horsepower.

For the past three months Studebaker Corp., has included seat belts in all of its new cars-passing the price along to the consumer. Sherwood H. Egbert, Studebaker president, describes the response from safety officials as "terrific." If a customer asks, Stude­baker will take off the belts and deduct their price, but Egbert says this is so rare it has not been worth keeping figures.

Installation rates by other manufacturers have climbed spectacularly in the past three years. Amer­ican Motors Corp. reports it is installing seat belts on 20 per cent of its cars, compared with 13 per cent last year and 3 per cent in 1961. Chevrolet and Ford both report installation rates of about 20 per cent at the factory for their standard sized cars.

All automakers point out that many more belts are installed by dealers and service stations since all cars in the past two model years have included provisions for seat belt anchors.

Regardless if seat belts are made standard, it will still take a major selling campaign on the part of fleet managers to get their men to use seat belts. There is no substitute for patient, persistent low key selling of the idea of using seat belts. The changing of opinions and the overcoming of emotional obstacles, whether they relate to fear of being tied down or to resentment toward any imagined impugning of one's driving ability takes time and cannot be accomplished by simply putting seat belts in cars.

QUALITY IMPORTANT

Once a fleet decides to use seat belts it should make certain that it purchases quality belts. While a poor belt is better than no belt at all, it is still not good enough. And choosing a quality belt is some­times difficult.

A spokesman for Robert W. Hunt Laboratories, one of the nation's leading testers of seat belts, recently said this about seat belt testing:

"We, with many years' experience in this field, often feel that we can evaluate seat belts by looking at them and can automatically determine that certain seat belts are not of proper quality just by looking at them. Our technical people, however, were sur­prised a couple of months ago when they examined samples of a new seat belt to be marketed and after saying it was a very good belt, were quite surprised to find that all samples failed at a load under 3,000 pounds."

If the experts in the field can't tell from looking at a seat belt whether it is a safe belt, how can the fleet operator determine whether he is buying a safe belt.

The answer is that the fleet operator should de­mand certification-not just words or promises-that the belts he buys meet SAE specifications on a con­tinuous basis.

Many manufacturers, facing the heavy competi­tion of today's market, are tempted to shave corners. A few ways in which unreliable manufacturers can cut costs and sacrifice quality on seat belts are by using "seconds" on webbing or use of webbing with lower end-count, substitution of lower cost steels on vital metal parts, such as floor hardware and substi­tution of cheaper thread for stitching.

None of these substitutions can easily be determined by eye examination. They only show up in laboratory tests.

Price, too, is meaningless in determining the quality of seat belts. Because of the wide variation in the way seat belts are marketed at the retail level there is a wide variance in price. Belts which are sold through multiple distribution channels-warehouse distributors, wholesalers-retailers-tend to be priced at the high end; belts sold direct through large chains, discount houses, mail order firms, tend to be at the low end. Often the same belt can be found selling for $4.95 at one outlet and $10.95 in another. In either case, there is no difference in quality. Again, the only sure guide is certification of test and inspection on a continuous basis. And to be sure that the belt meets SAE standards.

REMOVING BELTS

Often times a fleet operator will have seat belts removed from his cars when it is time to trade. AF recommends this practice is at the most a questionable economy. Prior to the 1962 models, the purchase of seat belts necessarily included the price of floor mounting parts and installations as well as the price of the belts. However, since all cars are now equipped with floor attachments for the two front seats, the only additional expense for a new car is the cost of the belts.

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Removal of seat belts from a car-most of which are worn and soiled-leaves unsightly holes in the rear floor mats and invariably shows well-worn areas in the vicinity of the floor anchors. In many cases, dealers have been charging $15 to $25 for mat re­placement. In addition, the installation of used, some­times frayed belts in a new car is questionable from an appearance standpoint as well as a safety stand­point.

If the seat belts belong to the driver, tell him that you will supply belts with his new car. This is a good way to get company-installed belts.

The problem of locating the correct position on the floor for seat belt installation on 1961 and prior cars is made simple with the use of templates. Most car companies will supply such information to fleet users. As a service to AF readers, Beam's Manufacturing Co., 1327 N. Robinson Av., Oklahoma City, is offering free templates. As an added service, the company is offering free dashboard stickers stating "Don't Be Caught Dead Sitting On Your Seat Belt." The company doesn't mean the slogan to be misconstrued as sick humor. It's just that the problem of getting people to wear seat belts is a deadly matter.

The man in the police patrol car, by nearly a 4-to-1 vote, endorses the automotive seat belt as an effective and practical safety device in police work.

This was revealed in a nationwide survey of police departments in 214 medium-to-large metropolitan areas, conducted by Allied Chemical Corp., producers of Caprolan nylon, which is used for seat belt web­bing.

The survey, the first of its kind, was designed to determine 1) how many police departments use seat belts in their patrol vehicles, and 2) how patrolmen react to seat belts, and whether they feel the device helps or hinders their operations.

The findings reveal that 132 of the 214 police de­partments surveyed now have all or some of their vehicles equipped with belts. Another 40 departments have current installation plans. Forty-two, or 20 per cent of the surveyed departments, are without belts.

The safety value of seat belts was not denied by any of the police departments questioned. All agree that in their line of work, where policemen are frequently called upon to tax their patrol vehicles to the maxi­mum in speed and maneuverability, belts provide immeasurable safety.

Police in Riverside, Calif., and Eugene, Ore., pointed out that belts prevented two serious injuries to patrolmen in their communities. And in New York City, belts were credited with saving an officer's life in a high-speed crash while on a burglary investi­gation.

In Charleston, W. Va., where the police depart­ment plans to install seat belts in its patrol cars in the future, an official made this terse comment: "Boys in accident division bought their own."

Why, then, do 20 per cent of the departments surveyed report that they have no present plans to install belts in their patrol cars?

Budgetary allocation is one reason. Another is the impression by a few police officials that belts will hinder patrol operations. This impression is often changed when these officials have an opportunity to observe seat belts in use.