Citation

Neff RJ. Proc. Am. Assoc. Automot. Med. Annu. Conf. 1961; 5: 249-252.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1961, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

The most serious gap in our seat belt standard is caused by the fact that present belts cannot be effectively used by infants and very small children. From a practical standpoint, it would appear that these children need some sort of specialized restraining device. There are a great variety of devices currently on the market which attempt to fill this gap. While a few of these would appear to be designed to supply effective protection under crash conditions, the great majority obviously are not. Unfortunately, it is impossible for the uninitiated to determine which devices are good and which devices would supply only minimal protection at low g loads. Almost all of these devices carry the word "Safety" somewhere in their advertising or literature, and to the uninitiated, this would appear to mean safety under all conditions where restraint is needed. Conversely, there is no standard, recommended practice, or test procedure to guide the manufacturer who desires to market an effective device. Because of this gap we have in recent years encountered some difficulties with State laws with regard to children's restraining devices that attach to permanent structure. At least one State has interpreted this type of attachment as automatically placing the device under their seat belt regulation and has therefore ruled that it must meet the minimum standards of such seat belt regulations. As you can well understand, this would put the manufacturer of an effective children's restraining device, which requires attachment to permanent structure, at a distinct disadvantage while allowing manufacturers of what might be considered marginal or even unsafe devices complete freedom. As more and more States adopt seat belt regulations the possibility of this type of interpretation becomes more prominent.

With all of these problems as a background, the SAE Motor Vehicle Seat Belt Committee appointed a Subcommittee to investigate the feasibility of writing standards for both one-g (panic stop) and high-g devices. This paper reports the findings and recommendations of that subcommittee.