nrc
Well-Known Member
I'm going to just go ahead and say that I trust engineers over personal injury lawyers when it comes to safety.That loop is a "safety feature". The stitching in that loop is designed to rip out during a collision and somehow help with the severity of the impact. Common sense tells me they won't help and the lawyers and several other auto manufacturers agree. Here's a good read.
https://dysart-law.com/seat-belt-energy-management-loops-or-rip-stitching-failures/
The article you quote is BS. They deliberately confuse the purpose of energy seat belt load limiters with just having slack in the belt.
The Mustang has both seat belt pretensioners and the load limiting loops. The NHTSA has said that this combination is very effective in reducing injuries for belted passengers.
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/811835
The problem is that pretensioners are necessary to restrain movement in a crash as much as possible. That creates a new problem in that if you eliminate movement to only that allowed by the stretch of the belt you can end up with internal injuries when forces build beyond a certain point. Load limiters are designed to keep those forces within reasonable limits.
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