I’m too sexy for my car
I commute a long way to work (about 50 miles), so I’ve been waiting for a chance to get a car with great mileage. When the maintenance on my Olds Calais started getting too high (at 185,000 miles), I bought a Honda Insight, and it’s a great car.
Except for one thing: the seat belts don’t fit large-size passengers, such as for instance my beautiful wife. I figured I could solve that problem by just going out and buying a seat belt extender for the car. The Honda sales guy told me I could do that. How hard could that be?
Turns out it could be impossible. There are no seat belt extenders for Honda cars available anywhere in the United States. And Honda, as a matter of corporate policy, refuses to manufacture them. If you call Honda they will tell you—I am not making this up—that if you can’t fasten their safety belts you should drive one of their competitors’ products instead.
It turns out federal regulations only require the auto makers to provide a belt to fit people ranging from a 102-lb woman to a 215-lb man. That’s supposed to cover 90% of the population, but in fact the standard is so out of date that it may exclude a quarter of all adult women And it ignores the needs of the people who fall outside the standard. All of whom are subject to seat belt laws.
There are links on Elizabeth Fisher’s fine site that will allow you to file an online comment with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is considering a more sensible regulation. Let them hear from you.