HYPOTHESIS- 

1.Seatbelts

2. Seatbelts are not as useful as they could be

3. Seatbelts are not useful

4. Seatbelts need to be improved

5. Seatbelts need to be outlawed

6. Getting rid of all seatbelts will cause people to drive more slowly and more carefully and will also make car crashes easier to escape.

Getting rid of seat belts would not only cause people to be more cautious of their driving and take more precautions while driving, which would result in fewer accidents, but there are many reasons for campaigning for the ban of seatbelts. Seatbelts cause people to be mangled by airbags all the time. There have been multiple reports of people becoming trapped in fiery car accidents that they otherwise would have been able to escape had they not still been stuck in their seatbelt. 

Source 1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0828282X14000051

Next-Generation Airbags and the Possibility of Negative Outcomes Due to Thoracic Injury

-Seatbelts are noted to cause complications when used in conjunction with airbags. 

Source 2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4608342/

This article details an instance of a man with no underlying medical conditions who died very suddenly when a three-point seatbelt was compressed on his neck in an accident. 

Generally, a safety belt is essential during driving and often decreases the mortality rate of the passengers up to 50-75%. The majority of articles have been written about their benefits only, but it is also undeniable that in the case of improper use, seat belts can even be dangerous and life-threatening (1–4). The following report presents a rare mortality case with fatal asphyxia caused by the seat belt, referred to forensic department.

The deceased was described as a 49 year old man who was driving with a high speed of 110 kilometers per hour, in a highway in Tehran. His car had been hit hard from behind by another car. He died instantly without collision with the dashboard, steering wheel or any other part of the car according to the statement of the car passenger. 

On the neck, strip-like bruises were visible on the left side. On the trunk, strip printed abrasion was seen starting from the upper left shoulder and extending diagonally to the right side (Possibly the pressure of the seat belt)

Source 3: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-16-4115-2_19

-This source discusses what it is exactly that causes drivers, specifically truck drivers, to have an increase in driving recklessly. The study found that having the safety and protection of a seatbelt causes many drivers to become less likely to use human instinct in order to protect themselves and prevent an accident.

Human errors have consistently been implicated in a high percentage of road transport accident. In this study, there are three factors that have been considered as contributing factors to the human error which are social factor, driving behaviour and also individual factors. The aims of this research were to study the level and to compare the contributing factors to the human error among commercial vehicle drivers at Pahang and Terengganu. The relationship between factors that contribute to human error and road transport accident also determined. Data were collected from 80 respondents. Plus, observational technique was conducted at two roads chosen in Pahang and Terengganu. The questionnaire results concluded that there had association between factors that contribute to human error and road transport accident. Observational technique results indicate that drivers had highest percentage in not wearing seatbelts. Therefore, this research concludes that the factors that contribute to human error have the tendency to road transport accident.

Source 4: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44687904

-This source mainly talks about how seatbelts can sometimes fail to protect their users and are at times counter-intuitive.

Occupant ejection may occur during planar and rollover collisions. These ejections can be associated with serious/fatal injuries. Occasionally, occupants will allege that they were wearing a seatbelt immediately before the ejection occurred. Some accident investigators have opined that a seatbelt became disengaged due to collision forces and/or occupant interactions, leaving the occupant essentially unrestrained and exposed to ejection from the vehicle. We present three case studies of collisions with documented seatbelt disengagement at or during the collision, as well as three controlled tests. The release of the seatbelt was always associated with dire consequences for the occupant’s outboard upper extremity. Evidence of seatbelt webbing interaction with the occupant was always evident, and the interaction of the belt with the vehicle interior trim was also apparent.

Source 5: https://www.sae.org/publications/technical-papers/content/2019-01-0619/

-This source delves further into the phenomenon of seatbelts becoming tangled and trapping the occupant. 

Since 2000, over 200 rear seat occupants have become entangled in the seatbelt when they inadvertently switched it from emergency locking mode (ELR) to automatic locking mode (ALR). Since a method is needed to lock the seatbelt when installing child restraint systems (CRS), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) commissioned tool, inc. to develop prototype devices that could reduce the risk of seatbelt entanglement resulting from the lockability requirement. A field analysis of entanglement incidents was first conducted to inform countermeasure design. Prototype devices were developed and evaluated through testing with volunteer subjects in comparison to standard seatbelt systems by assessing how different designs would be used to install CRS, the quality of the resulting installations, how users would disentangle a trapped child surrogate, as well as to identify volunteer experience when using the belts themselves. Four prototype devices were evaluated in two phases of testing conducted at the UMTRI. All four prototype devices had shorter disentanglement times than trials with the standard seatbelt, but there was not a statistically significant difference between the devices. There were no substantial differences in the quality of child restraint installation among the devices and the standard seatbelt.