I can’t fathom why you’d ever want to drive or ride in a car without wearing a seatbelt. There is no situation in the world where it’s safer to be unbelted. Even if you’re the safest, most cautious driver on the planet, there’s no stopping a reckless driver from crossing into your lane or running a stop light and hitting you. In that case, wearing a seatbelt could mean the difference between a few bruises and a life-changing injury. It’s never worth the risk.
Yet, 9% of all front-seat occupants did not use their seatbelts last year, according to data obtained by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The number is even worse for back-seat passengers, where seatbelt use was just 80 percent in 2023.
Proof that seatbelts save lives is easy to find. From the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration:
In 2023, 23,959 passenger vehicle occupants were killed. Nearly 50% of those killed were not buckled (based on known seat belt use).
Seat belts saved an estimated 14,955 lives and could have saved an additional 2,549 people if they had been wearing seat belts, in 2017 alone.
The NHTSA also points out that buckling up in the front seat reduces your risk of fatal injury by 45%, and chances of a moderate to critical injury by 50%. Despite years’ worth of overwhelming data like this, some automakers still make it too easy to disable the annoying chime that comes with driving without your seatbelt.
Ah Yes, That Chime
The installation of seatbelts became mandatory for all passenger cars in the United States in 1968, but it wasn’t until 1984 did the first state—New York—make the use of seatbelts in the front seats mandatory. By 1995, 48 other states had seatbelt usage laws in place. New Hampshire remains the only state in the Union not to have such a law.
The seatbelt-reminder chime for drivers wouldn’t become mandatory until 1972, when only 20% of drivers were actually wearing their belts. Eventually, the chime requirement moved to all front-seat passengers. And it wasn’t until 2024 when the NHTSA finalized a rule that will require automakers to have chimes for rear-seat occupants not wearing their belts, which is set to go into effect in 2027.
Anyone who’s ridden in a car without a seatbelt will know how annoying these chimes can be. Being bothersome is, of course, the whole point of the noise. It incentivizes occupants to buckle up so as to stop the noise from blaring through the speaker system. The majority of occupants simply buckle up, but as the data shows, there are still a fair number of people who decide not to.
I’m Shocked Automakers Still Have These Features Built-In
I bring all of this up because of a TikTok I came across a few days ago showing a procedure of how to disable the seatbelt-reminder chime in a brand-new Toyota GR86. I suspected it might involve some parts-swapping and ECU trickery, but no—being able to turn off the chime is a built-in feature on new Subaru-built cars like this ’86.
@pushingpistons You can do this with a similar process for other cars and sometimes it’s actually very useful. BUT PLEASE ALWAYS WEAR YOUR SEAT BELT WHEN DRIVING ????#carsoftiktokcontest ♬ original sound – pushing pistons
And it’s not like disabling the noise is some sort of impossibly tricky set of cheat-code button press patterns, either. All you have to do is put the car into accessory mode (press the start button twice without putting your foot on the brake) and buckle/unbuckle the belt 20 times within 30 seconds. That’s it! The chime goes away. It takes no time at all and requires no special skills, tools, or parts.
Subaru isn’t the only manufacturer that has a built-in way to disable the chime. Ford has a similar trick for its new vehicles that involves the same buckle/unbuckle trick. At least you have to put on the handbrake for this version. Here’s the full tutorial, ironically shared by a Ford dealership on Facebook:
Some later-model Toyotas have a trick too, where you can actually activate a secret menu in the gauge cluster to switch between having the chime on or off when the seatbelt isn’t buckled:
Stuff like this, where it takes under a minute to disable the sound without having to spend money on extra tools, feels wrong to see built into a new car. The above videos point out reasons you might want to disable the chime—if you’re wearing a five-point harness on a race track, if you’re driving down your driveway to your mailbox, if you’re driving at low speeds on a farm, or if you’re carrying something heavy in the passenger seat. While I understand not wanting to have the beep going during those times, I don’t think those excuses are strong enough.
If you really want to disable the alerts, there are simpler solutions, like those seatbelt-shaped clips that are basically buckles without the belt, designed to fit into the latch specifically to trick the car into thinking the seatbelt is buckled. You can also just pull the old trick of buckling the seat belt before you get in the car, then just sit on top of the belt. It’s kind of weird to see manufacturers programming this stuff into their cars to make it easier in the year 2025. Shouldn’t it be as hard as possible to disable a safety feature like this?
Automakers Should Go Even Further
Back in 1973, the NHTSA introduced a law that required all new cars to have a seatbelt interlock mechanism, requiring the driver’s and right-seat passenger’s seatbelts to be buckled before the car would start. Seeing as how around 20% of people wore their belts, this caused a bit of a stir. From History:
“An enormous political backlash ensued,” says Jerry Mashaw, professor emeritus at the Yale Law School and co-author of The Struggle for Auto Safety. “Congress received more letters from Americans complaining about [the interlock mechanism] than they did about Nixon’s ‘Saturday Night Massacre.’”
Congress responded swiftly in 1974 by killing the interlock mechanism and further mandating that the annoying buzzing sound that indicated an unlatched seat belt could only last eight seconds.
The NHTSA didn’t give up on seat belts, though. It passed a new rule in 1977 that put the ball squarely in the automakers’ court. Detroit had to install some kind of “passive restraint”—a system that worked automatically without driver intervention—that would protect a crash test dummy from damage when hitting a wall at 35 mph.
That new rule led to the infamous “automatic safety belts” of the late 1970s, which swiveled around the driver upon entry. These also upset buyers:
Consumers immediately began arguing that automatic seat belts were unsafe in a car fire, potentially trapping passengers in a burning car. Carmakers agreed to add a release latch, which drivers could easily disconnect, rendering the automatic belt ineffective.
As this back-and-forth was going on, Ronald Regan won the presidency in 1980, with one of his administration’s first moves being to rescind the NHTSA’s rules on passive restraints. That move proved fruitless, as insurance companies sued to keep the rules in place, winning in the Supreme Court. Elizabeth Dole, then Secretary of the Department of Transportation, formulated a compromise that could satisfy everyone:
Dole issued a rule in 1985 that required automakers to install driver’s side airbags in all new cars unless—and this is the kicker—two-thirds of the states passed mandatory seat belt laws by April 1, 1989. Dole’s rule was so politically adroit because it looked like a regulation, but was really a gift to the auto industry. Cars already had seat belts, so all Detroit had to do was convince states to pass mandatory seat belt laws and it was off the hook for installing expensive air bags or automatic belts.
Automakers weren’t able to convince enough states to sign on with seatbelt laws, so driver’s side airbags were made standard in 1989. Eventually, though, 49 states introduced some kind of seatbelt law. So in the end, everyone got their wish (except for the people who didn’t want to wear seatbelts, I guess).
I suspect that if a seatbelt interlocking mechanism law were introduced today, it would face far less pushback. It only requires a few lines of code, so it wouldn’t be expensive or difficult to implement. And with 91% of people in America already wearing seatbelts, the population that would be affected by the rule would be much smaller. Such a law would certainly save lives. It’s just a matter of getting the right people to get behind it. I know I would be.
Top graphic image: DepositPhotos.com
Religious seat belt wearer, but those motorized belts can go F all the way off. I had them in something, must have been the 93 Eagle Talon. Horrible idea.
And if someone wants to masturbate their seat belt every time they get in the car, I guess that’s a choice.
Somewhat adjacent to this conversation. Why is it so rare for vehicles to have rear seat belts that are easy to deploy? So often I hop in the back of a cab or other car and it takes forever to get the belt connected, if you can even find the receiving end jammed in the cushions. Front seats are a breeze, but there’s something about how rear seats and their belts are designed that just suck.
Nanny state mentality, I bet you would have chosen to stay in Eden rather than acquire knowledge. Whoever would trade freedom for a little security deserves neither. I wear my seatbelt- but it darn sure shouldn’t be a regulated law. I guess you’d probably like to see gasoline outlawed, too, it’s detrimental to our health as a carcinogen! Shame on you for writing for this publication.
By that mentality, we should legalize lead drinkwear and dumping whatever chemicals, carcinogens, and poisons into drinkwater. Caveat Emptor!
That’s not how societies work. Blood writes laws. Laws are infrastructure.
Hell, lets get rid of the FAA. Let passengers and pilots make their own decisions, without the nanny state ATC. Those that make mistakes deserve to die, especially the young.
If the lead in the glass is known, sure. I still have some very nice glasswear that have about 30% lead. Real “purtty”. Mostly come out for Pesach.
Probably 75% of the MCV’s that I saw as a Firefighter / medic were caused by drunk drivers violating Newton’s Laws as well as the laws of the State of Oregon. Want to make driving safer? I can tell you where to start.
BTW: when Slick Willey was POTUS, ICE started deporting any non-citizen who got a DUII. DUII in the Hispanic community dropped like a stone. Citizen or not, it beccame culturally unacceptable.
So make the penalty high enough and DUII would decline. By a lot. I mean, how many airline pilots get busted for FUII? Not many.
And for that matter, why not drink a fifth of vodka while you’re at it? And drive with one bald tire in the winter for good measure?
Laws like this are put in place because some people refuse to learn from the errors of others and do what is in their own best interest.
But hey, if people want to risk it, they can pay a tax in the form of tickets and raised insurance rates until the natural weeding out process occurs.
I mean cue the back end cost claims rhetoric, but there is a difference between someone hurting another and someone hurting themselves.
Big difference for sure. I knew a guy who was paralyzed when thrown thrown through the window of his pickup. That hurt his family, though he got the worst of it.
And I knew a guy who was killed — and killed someone else — in a snowmobile accident. After a few beers him and a friend were riding across the lake ice without lights. He hit a guy who was walking across in the other direction. Sheared him off at the knees, and the guy’s body flipped up over the cowl and broke the rider’s neck. Both died on the ice.
I understand that you can’t always regulate stupid. But you can incentivize doing smarter things.
They may take our lives, but they will never take our freedumb!
it is a slippery slope. We still see cigarettes being sold and even allowed in places like casinos which are serving alcohol in public. Yet they are outlawed in bars. Why, because both are money makers for local governments. If not wearing a seatbelt made some money for the local school it would not be a law.
Come to think.of it I’ve never heard my truck seat belt chime. I’ll need to check and see if it is working next time.
I aspire to wear the seatbelt every time (“you are a father now,” in my wife’s inimitable words), but the next thing I am going to do after typing this comment is to go and see if the same thing can be done in a CX-50. Two reasons.
It will chime ruthlessly the moment you turn the car on. I’d rather have it chime when you move the transmission from P to D, which means i never have to hear it if I buckle up before putting it in drive. i often have a sleeping child in the back. hate the chimes.my bag on the passenger seat.the other “solutions” won’t work for me, as I do actually want to use the seatbelt as intended. so this sounds perfect. post the link for mazda, anyone in the know.
Internet suggests seatbelt extender plugs – anyone has experience with them?
Is it that much harder to just put the seatbelt on before you start the car? What’s the difference between seatbelt -> ON -> Drive vs ON-> seatbelt -> drive?
JJ, the difference is the thirty seconds or so you need to let the car electronics catch up, and the oil start flowing, in the bitter winter of upstate NY. I am not sassing you…. it’s real. You want to start it right away, and THEN do all the cockpit things one does before putting in in D – well, R, in my driveway’s case – to start moving.
That’s definitely what my parents did when we lived in Massachusetts. The result was I grew up thinking a couple seconds of chime was just part of the startup sequence. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t bother—I don’t even think I can “hear” it at this point.
Same here, I always associated the dinging in my car as the car telling you you’ve put it to run and not about the seatbelt.
We had a Tahoe at my work and you couldn’t shift out of park without buckling up. I legitimately heard about it from every employee…within three days. People had strong feelings about it. Very strong feelings.
I would too, my seatbelt goes on only once my garage is confirmed closed, or I’m done reversing. In other words going into first gear or drive is always accompanied by my left hand putting the seatbelt on. Made me look like an idiot a couple times when I was stopped for a long light, put the car in neutral, and as I’m ready to take off I grab the already belted belt to try to put it on again.
Tahoe drivers? There’s a shocker.
I hate the buzzer going off due to my laptop computer bag on the front seat. The buzzer going off due to groceries etc… on the back seat is a bridge too far. I am a religious seat belt wearer.
My only concern with auto reminders for the back seat are oddly enough, for kids in carseats. Hopefully they don’t fuck that up and I have the chime going off for a kid using a carseat’s five-point harness.
I can also see having a setting to disable the chime in situations where equipment is frequently sitting on a seat with a sensor in it. There are certainly decent reasons for work-arounds.
That being said, not wearing a seatbelt is stupid, and overall the reminders are fine. But trust me, you don’t want automatic belts lol. I found them to be really cool as a kid (I was also just stoked to be in the front seat as a young kid whenever it happened, another occurrence of a bygone era) but I also remember how remarkably frustrated the adults around me would get with them.
Also the problem with this take is where do the annoying nannies stop? Should the car continuously charm when you are over the speed limit? What about it refusing to drive before every person has buckled up? Or you are not allowed to drive anymore because driving is dangerous, you have to use an automated car. It just never ends.
Just remember the wise words of Buzz Lightyear:
“There are no restraining harnesses in the cargo area. We’ll be much safer in the cockpit.”
Bad take. Protecting people from everything is dumb. Might as well start bringing back motorized seatbelts then. The reminder is perfectly fine and should have the ability to disable it.
NHTSA sometimes has to find stuff to justify their existence.
“Personally, I’d love to have a seatbelt that puts itself on me. Source: Facebook Marketplace”
My dude…have you ever owned a car with auto belts? I owned that exact V20 Camry. HATED it. You know how sometimes you have to open the door a little to get something like fast food or pay for parking? Prepared to be guillotined.
These were common among my high school and college cohort – I still loath them to this day. The GM door mount belts were awkward and little better, but at least you could use them normally.
I hated the motorized door mounted seatbelts. If I got out too fast I risked strangulation.
So many memories of my 1990 Mercury Tracer wagon and near-strangulation.
Thank you for letting me know I am not the only one.
Early 90’s Escorts/Tracers are my number #1 memory of mouse belts. Probably from my aunt cursing them out all the time.
Need to crack the door a bit to reach out for the bank teller thing or get a parking stub?? Be careful it rips your hat off or jans your neck.
I’m guessing author never had to deal with a car like that in his times. They were everywhere back in the day and sucked.
I am firmly middle-aged, but I don’t even start my vehicle before my seat belt is buckled. It’s just habit, like 75% of driving.
Same. I sometimes will go out to the parking lot on a nice day, recline the seat back and take a nap in the car. I can’t go to sleep unless my seat belt is fastened. It just feels too weird.
What if you’re in amphibious car in choppy waters that’s about to roll over?
or frozen water Ice fishing.
Came here to say exactly this. The first thing you do when you drive out onto the ice is unbuckle, because if the ice doesn’t hold you need to get out of the vehicle immediately. You can’t afford to waste time messing with a buckle. When that cold water hits you, the less you have to think about, the better.
second thing is roll down the window.
Yep.
https://youtu.be/y3VgdHgyTN4?list=RDy3VgdHgyTN4
An oldie but a goodie when you talk about this.
Maybe it’s electric and you might get electrocuted so you want to jump out and feed yourself to the sharks?
I’ll just swim over to the sinking boat…
My 78 rabbit did not start when the door mounted seat belts were not attached. There were just shoulder and no lap belts. I did call AAA once because someone got out and uncliped the passenger belt and I did not notice until the tow truck was on the way. I cut 2 wires in the door jamb twisted them together and solved the problem. I still always ware my seatbelt.
“…so driver’s side airbags were made standard in 1989”
Wrong again.
Automakers had the choice of installing Passive/Automatic Seatbelts or Airbags as late as the 1998 model year.
Some automakers were even able to skirt the law by offering neither airbags nor passive/automatic seatbelts certain models – such as the base-model Jetta (upper trims had passive seatbelts) and the 1989 Mercury Tracer.
When I was shopping for my first new car in 88/89, I purposely ignored cars with automatic/passive belts.
“There is no situation in the world where it’s safer to be unbelted.”
Farm or utility use. In and out frequently and low speeds on unpopulated roads/no roads.
That’s not safer.
Just inconvenient.
True, with some rare exceptions where it would be safer to not buckle. See comment below. I know I’ve unbelted when doing deep water crossings.
Driving across a frozen lake is the only time I have forgone seatbelts.
I used to work at at a camp on Catalina Island. The prevailing theory there was you shouldn’t wear belts so you could jump out in case the car went off the cliff.
As a frequent four wheeler I fought hard to change that perception- you’re not going to be able to jump out before it goes over, and then you (and everything else not strapped in) are projectiles that cause more harm.
A few years after I left their van went over the cliff one day. A staffer actually attempted the jump out and spent some time in the ICU as a result.
No it’s not. My Subaru beeps at you until you rebuckle or turn off the car. For example, back up a trailer, unbuckle while still in reverse, and it starts beeping. Put it in park so you can go detach the trailer, and it’s still beeping. It’s beeping while you are back there disconnecting. Get it disconnected, all while beeping, walk back up to the driver seat to pull the car forward a foot, and it’s still beeping, unless you buckle up. So it’s still beeping.
This is a terrible take, especially the part about mandating the interlock. I’m no fool, I’d never take my car out on the road without buckling. But there are legitimate reasons to not buckle up, those videos actually showed some of them. My Volt will screech at me if I have as much as a laptop bag in my passenger seat, I’d love an easy way to disable the buzzer for little things like that.
Yeah people are gonna be dumb regardless.
I would be curious how many accidents were caused by a driver trying to drive and put on a seatbelt when the annoying buzzer gets the best of them when in a hurry.
Not saying they don’t need to use belts, but man, more than a few times I have gotten in and started going then had to drive with a knee to get the belt on while being distracted by the annoying beeps getting progressively louder and constant.
Simple fix for that, buckle up before you move. Make it a habit, so you don’t forget.
Or you know, quit the beeper after 15 seconds as in the past. I then could wait until the stop sign on those instances where I show my imperfections and forget.
i disabled mine because it is annoying when backing up and the Subaru is beeping at you like crazy. Yes, i am one of those people that still turns around to backup
I guess maybe I don’t wear my seatbelt when I back out of my garage because I immediately have to get out of the car to close the garage door. I wouldn’t mind having to buckle up to do that… it takes less than a second. I swear all the people who refuse to buckle up know the same person who flipped over in a ditch and drowned because they couldn’t get the seatbelt off.
Or were thrown to safety….lol.
I also have heard plenty of excuses about air bags killing people too though.
If you want to see real mental gymnastics, dip into the anti helmet biker world.
I disabled the seatbelt warning light and chime altogether in my Sportwagen, using VCDS (VW product specific coding and diagnostic tool). I always wear my seatbelt, as do my passengers. I just hated the damn thing dinging at me when trying to move the car around in the driveway.
Since my grandfather passed away last year, I don’t know anyone else who refuses to wear a seatbelt. Though he always made sure I was wearing mine when I’d go riding around with him as a kid.
Sorry but, bad take.
We need less nanny tech not more. If people want to kill themselves for not wearing a seat belt it’s chlorine in the gene pool. Spare me the societal costs of healthcare if they don’t die argument.
The costs of cleanup of their death, plus emotional tolls on emergency crews as well as the victim’s families and friends, then?
Bad habits shouldn’t be a death sentence, especially when (relatively) gentle reminders save scores of lives.
Capitalistically, they can’t produce value if they’re dead.
“Bad habits shouldn’t be a death sentence, especially when (relatively) gentle reminders save scores of lives”
Do they really? I have my doubts.
Funny, anecdotal self-reflection isn’t science, it turns out.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/811097.pdf
I’d be with you if the fact that they were not wearing a belt automatically meant a “Do Not Rescue/ Rescucitate” and cancelled life insurance claims for the deceased.
This will be the final capitalist result. Insurance will by the data off the car and it will show you had no belt on, and they will deny coverage. Or, driverless cars will have the interlock as part of the tech regulations because they will be partly “at fault” for any mess ups as the “driver” companies will make sure to limit their liability. People act like once a thing is required, it will be a sharp change from the past, as if we can’t still buy and register and insure cars that don’t have seat belts at all.
If the goal is societal “cost-savings” that will work and maybe that’s what you meant. But if the goal is to encourage seatbelt use…the folks who don’t buckle (outside edge cases) are by definition acting irrationally. They don’t care that their insurance claim will be denied if they’re unbuckled because they already know they’re not going to get in an accident. Until they do.
I could get behind that.
Skip the tech and make a seatbelt violation become a three month suspension for the driver. All that’s needed here is to update the law to include the suspension provision.
Unless they’ve already reproduced. Then not only are we collectively paying their healthcare, we are also paying to feed to house and feed their kids.