<VV> Seats

[William Hubbell]

If your goal is to make a 50+ year car as safe as a modern car, you’re probably in the wrong hobby.

Sure, you could cobble up some sort of a latch for your seat backs, but to what purpose?  It’s not the seat back lurching forward that’s going to hurt you in a panic stop - it’s all the soft parts of your body going through sudden deceleration (think brain, inside skull) and the hard parts you will hit in front (think steering wheel and dash). 

Modern car safety is about a lot more than just locking the seat backs.   Shoulder harnesses help to restrain the upper body from lunging forward, but they aren’t just tacked onto some random part of the car, but rather part of a comprehensive, engineered, and tested system to ensure they perform the desired function.   Air bags are another part of that system, as are the specifically designed front end crumple zones.

If you are worried about the lack of modern safety features in your 1966 Corvair, maybe you shouldn’t be driving it.  Otherwise, you could realize that the most important safety feature in a car is the person driving it, and adjust your driving habits in your older cars to minimize the chances of ever needing additional safety equipment. 

Bill

On Aug 9, 2020, at 10:18 PM, Richard via VirtualVairs <virtualvairs at corvair.org> wrote:

After a non corvair friend re upholstered my 66 front bucket seat, he asked me what prevented the seat back from lunging forward during a sudden stop. I told him that with 4 drums and no power boost, there were no sudden stops. Now I'm thinking....is there a way to install some type of lock mechanism on the seat backs? Richard Simoff

Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Droid
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