Cleaned out the garage and a seat belt warning.

We cleaned out our garage yesterday and I found our old carseat. My oldest is 10 and we borrowed it from my aunt and her son is 16. So the seat is 16 years old. I really loved this seat but when I looked at it yesterday, all I could think was "wow, seats have come a long way!" 2 strap heights, not much padding, t shield. Pretty bare bones seat but he always seemed comfortable and since I've brought up the seat, I'll tell you why I feel safer with latch.

When my son was a year old (FF since that's what they said at the time) we were forced to stop suddenly at a low speed because the person ahead of us slammed on his brakes. I heard a loud POP and thought we got rear ended. I turned my head to look behind us and I was face to face with my son. The seat belt holding his carseat in had fallen apart. The buckle was in pieces and we weren't even hit. He was thrown (in his car seat) towards the windshield but since he was in the middle, the car seat got wedged in between the two front seats. He was fine.

When I called about getting the seatbelt replaced the car dealership told me they wouldn't do it for free (even though I had already had it approved by the home office) because it was my responsibility to have my seat belts inspected every year. They did eventually replace them though.

So anyways. I'm sure most of you do check your seat belts and I don't see how I could have visually seen that the buckle would fall apart but I was reminded of it after finding the car seat in the garage and thought I would post it.

We cut the straps on the seat of course but I was sad. It was a good seat.

How scary! How old was the car when this happened?

What a story! HOW SHOCKING!

How old was the car when this happened?

Click to expand...

The car was 7 years old at the time.

Yes I check the seatbelts regularly myself and they're also checked every six months by a mechanic when the car goes for a warrant of fitness. Don't forget, the same thing could happen with the latch straps of say a car seat nearing it's expiration.. sounds like an awful fluke accident, glad those seats caught him from thrusting too much forward!

How could it happen with a latch strap? They don't have buckles.

mamisan said:

How could it happen with a latch strap? They don't have buckles.

Click to expand...

Britax and a few other brands have LATCH connectors that are basically buckles...

I'm so glad your ds was fine in that incident!

Please don't take this the wrong way, but....(deep breath)


Would you go a year (or more) without inspecting your brakes? Of course not. Seatbelts are safety equipment just like brakes and should be inspected occasionally for wear and tear, and replaced as needed. :twocents:

Since I believe seatbelts are considered a "lifetime warrenty" item, you may be able to have that done for little to no cost to you as needed.

I've never heard of inspecting seat belts. How is this done, what would I look for? Would you need to do it on a new vehicle, say 05, or just the old ones? How would a lay person know if something were slightly off? I mean aside from seeing a crack or something else equally obvious.

Mostly you're looking for obvious wear on the seatbelt - fraying of the webbing, holes, tears, extreme sun bleaching, brittleness, etc. as well as whether or not a switchable retractor still locks when switched.

Britax and a few other brands have LATCH connectors that are basically buckles...

Click to expand...

Right, but the part that broke on our seatbelt was the housing. The part that has the button. It broke into many pieces so there was nothing for the seatbelt to be buckled into. Even if the housing around the clip on a britax latch strap broke away, the clip should still be intact and still be hooked onto the anchor. Anything can happen of course. Nothing is fail safe! I like Latch but we still used the seatbelts for all the carseats until recently and will again if needed.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but....(deep breath)

Click to expand...

I'm not offended! We did try to take another car in to have the seat belts checked but they acted like they didn't know what we were talking about. We always look them over but from the outside it looked completely normal. I don't know how a mechanic would have been able to tell something was wrong. I do agree that it's good to have them checked!

After a few phone calls the home office called the dealership and the belt was replaced for free.