There is nothing more effective in preventing death and serious injury from car crashes than wearing your seat belt. Seat belts are specifically designed by automakers to keep people retained in their seats during a car accident. They are meant to ensure that contact between drivers and passengers and the interior of the vehicle is kept to a bare minimum during a crash. They also substantially reduce the risk of individuals being thrown from the car. Until the early 1990s seat belts were designed with a shoulder and waist strap for the two front seat occupants and only waist straps for the rear occupants. In modern vehicles, however, safety regulations dictate that all seats in all passenger vehicles must be of the shoulder-and-waist strap variety.
Seat belts are also not just a lone safety measure anymore. They work in conjunction with other components in a vehicle such as head restraints and air bags as part of a complete injury prevention system. But within this system, the seat belt is considered by safety experts to be the most important element and the other components such as the air bag should not be relied on as a replacement for seal belts.
