Just to check I'm not crazy

[woofy]

I've never got the belts on my Octy to lock and just retract only when fitting child seats. Our new car doesn't seem to do it either, but our Mazda 6 did, most Subies I've been in do, and most cheapie cars seem to do it. I often wonder why its not an ADR seeing as we are only just now getting ISOFIX and all car seats have to be held in mostly by the belt.....

[bluefrog]

woofy what type of seat? baby/toddler or booster??

have you got one of these?

[woofy]

I have those, I hate those, I loathe those. I also have the curved ones and the clip on Exacto clip....much prefer the switchable seatbelts that auto lock. And yep baby/toddler/child....boosters its not longer an issue.

[bluefrog]

I hate them too, just let the wifey work her magic with them instead. I've got no idea what switchable seatbelts are however ..

[woofy]

Switchable seatbelts have been in cars for some time particularly Jap cars, our Mazda 6 had them while our Mazda 323 didn't but the 3s do. Most cars do these days, I figured the SKoda didn't due to having the ISOFIX points in them, but Subies tend to have both.

Seeing as there is always a big who hah about most seats not fitted properly, the main issue is that our lap/sash belts can't put the tension in a precrash state. So you either use those metal pieces from hell, or you have a car that just switches into a locked mode.

We were pretty certain our new Santa Fe didn't have them either, and it seems not, but the previous version did and the US ones do....go figure. I would think by now they might have started to make it mandatory really if its really the main issue with seat fitting.....well the other is people not tightening the harness enough.

[K1W1]

What an earth is a switchable seat belt and why would I want one?

[brad]

What an earth is a switchable seat belt and why would I want one?

It's a locking seatbelt i think.

When you fit a child seat, you do the install & right at the end you pull the seat belt out of the inertia reel as far as you can & it engages a locking pawl. as the seat belt retracts, you can't pull it out again, so it's locked in place. You let it retract as far as possible, give the seatbelt a bit of a tug to get the babyseat as locked in as possible & it's just like having a racing harness on.

I used to do similar when i was club racing. I'd put the seat backwards a few inches, give the seatbelt a tug to lock the inertia reel & then put the seat forward again.

edit: you'd want a switchable seat belt if you have baby seats in the car or if your kids come with you when you are driving like an idiot.

[woofy]

You just reminded me, yep used to use it in the front seat for track days etc, I completely forgot about that, these days everythings revolves around kids....I wonder if the front seat belts do it on any of our cars as even the 323 it used to work on when the back ones didn't.

They call them switchable as they only engage as Brad described above.

As for why you want one, wait til Grandkids arrive Kiwi, its worse for my parents as you only want to use the child seats sometimes and its a PITA if you don't have that kind of belt. Luckily my in laws Pathfinder does as does my parents Integra.

Actually now I think about it, what Brad discribed for track days was different, you engage the lock and then force it to say locked. The switchable versions usually in the rear seats ratchet back in with a click so you can pull it tight and only go back to normal when the whole belt has fed back in.

[brad]

I'm using different direction tugs between the front & backseat