Turboed, the OP is long gone, you’re only preaching to the choir here. Apparently he didn’t care for your brand of tough love/rough justice. Everyone including me pointed out how foolish it was to give up this important and effective safety device. However, we’ve moved on from his shocking ignorance to your shocking urban-myth style of ignorance. Just as the steering wheel airbag is crucially important in a head-on crash, a strong seat without any engineered weakness is also crucially important in the case of a car being rear ended. Powered seatbelt retractors don’t as you stated, guide you forward into the airbag. They try their best to pull back into the seat to prevent you from being thrown around.

Notwithstanding Terrasmac’s uncharacteristic mis-speak re seats having some designed in mandate to bend, this is not true or desirable.

Your talk about seats designed to break, bend or collapse in concert with any type of crash situation brings to mind what old farts said when seatbelts were first made mandatory. They insisted a seatbelt could prevent them from being safely thrown clear, or would drown them when too much corn liquor caused a dip in a deep lake.

 

I think you misunderstood me about the seatbelt. They dont guid you, obviously thats impossible, but they do have wiggle room. When the seat belt locks up, you can still move a fair bit, since it only a 2 point. Vs a 4 or 5 point harness where when properly use, leaves you little to no wiggle room. Would you trust your seatbelt on a roller coaster ride? I wouldnt. But thats why there are airbags.

Its undeniable that air bag saves lives and seat belt saves lives.

 

3 point technically, the wiggle room you mention is in the shoulder strap and is part of the design to tighten up the lap part during use.

Then in most modern vehicles they are eliminating this as much as possible with the ballistic tensioners. The tensioner function will tighten the should function faster, leading to further distance from the airbag and a faster engaging waist belt

 

Why quick release?

Because:

 

I swear in my z if i ever see someone do that, im slapping that shet out their hands.

 

I knew a 240 guy that left his windows down and wheel on the dashboard while running in for the receipt to his gas. Came out and wheel was gone. Had to have car towed home. Most hilariously expensive fill-up ever.

 

+1 to terras and dsz.