In the first move of its type, the New Zealand government is seeking to lower
the country’s high road toll by insisting that webbing clamp seatbelts be
fitted in vehicles after their existing seatbelts fail the state vehicle safety
check.
New Zealand’s vehicle fleet is one of the oldest in the western world,
and over half of the new cars registered each year are second-hand models from
Japan.
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Although the New Zealand government has recently started publicising crash
tests, safety campaigners have pointed out that new car crash test results are
often irrelevant in a country where many people will never buy a new car.
As well as encouraging the purchase of safer new cars, the government is seeking
to improve the safety of the existing fleet by upgrading the seatbelts.
Pretensioner seatbelts are expensive and cannot be economically retro-fitted,
but webbing clamp belts are relatively cheap and can be bolted straight in to
many vehicles.
The initiative is the brainchild of safety campaigner Clive Matthew-Wilson,
who first began fitting webbing clamp seatbelts to his collection of classic
cars five years ago.
"I kept on seeing technical reports showing the clear superiority of webbing
clamp seatbelts, so I went down to the seatbelt factory and asked to buy some.
They thought I was mad, but after some persuasion, I got the factory to sell
these belts, first to me and then to the public. The government also thought
I was mad initially, but after a careful evaluation of my proposal, it eventually
became official policy," Matthew-Wilson said.
Under the proposed strategy, which is expected to become law by the end of
this year, webbing clamp belts will become compulsory where a seatbelt has to
be replaced as part of the state-regulated Warrant of Fitness (WOF) safety examination.
The WOF examination must be passed annually by vehicles up to six years old
and each six months after that. About one million vehicles will be affected
by the new policy.
Vehicles registered before 1980, together with vehicles with airbags and/or
seatbelt pretensioners are expected to be exempt from the strategy.
Public support for the upgrade strategy appears good, although it will increase
the cost of new seatbelt replacements by about $NZ30 ($US12) per belt.
Expert support for the scheme came from Chris Coxon, technical chair of the
Australian NCAP crash-testing program.
Coxon presented reports to a New Zealand government-sponsored seminar which
showed consistent massive improvements in occupant protection where webbing-clamp
seatbelts were fitted in place of the older inertia reel types.
The most dramatic example was the 1993 Holden Commodore which showed a 97 percent
chance of life-threatening injury for the front passenger in the first test,
which dropped to 26 percent after a webbing-clamp seatbelt was fitted.
There were initial concerns about fitting seatbelts into vehicles for which
they were never designed.
However, says Matthew-Wilson: "We demonstrated clearly that over half
the vehicle fleet already had seatbelts which were never put there by the manufacturer,
including many cars where the seatbelts had originally come from wreckers yards.
We consulted a number of experts internationally, and they told us if in doubt,
fit the seatbelts that restrain most effectively.
“Webbing clamps won’t make old cars as safe as new cars, but they
will offer a big improvement in a crash.”
Webbing clamp seatbelts are larger than most inertia-reel units, making upgrades
on certain cars difficult. However, Matthew-Wilson says he and his researchers
have currently successfully retrofitted every make and model they have investigated.
The Australian government, which is also keen to improve the crashworthiness
of its ageing vehicle fleet, is watching the New Zealand experiment with a view
to introducing the strategy there.
The problem facing New Zealand’s major seatbelt supplier, Swedish-based
Autoliv, is developing retrofit strategies for the staggering number of different
makes and models in New Zealand, believed to exceed 3500, many of them short-run
Japanese domestic vehicles imported privately.
Autoliv is believed to favour concentrating on the 10 percent of vehicles which
account for a high percentage of its sales. Safety campaigners, including the
chairman of the government’s transport select committee, Harry Duynhoven,
are pressuring Autoliv to spend the estimated NZ$500,000-plus ($US203,000) needed
to develop upgrade strategies which more comprehensively cover New Zealand’s
huge variety of vehicles.
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