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THIS WEEK, A reader asks:
My car is fitted with a seatbelt pretension system and load limiters. What exactly do they do and are they more effective than seatbelts without these?
Belting up is the single most effective thing you can do to protect yourself in a crash. Fact. According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (Rospa) Volvo’s three-point seatbelt design, created in 1959, has saved over one million lives worldwide.
A pretensioner, around since the 1950s, is a device designed to make seatbelts even more effective by removing the slack from a seatbelt as soon as an accident is detected or if the system senses excessive seatbelt tension on the driver or passenger’s seatbelt.
On standard seatbelts the locking system stops the seatbelt from extending any farther, but a pretensioner actively pulls in on the belt. This ‘pre’ tensioning of the belt pulls the wearer back firmly into their seat and into a better position to get the full protection of the front airbags. By reducing the movement of the body, it also reduces the risk of injury.
Load limiters are often installed to minimise seatbelt-inflicted injury by releasing a little more excess belt webbing.
You know that extra fold of fabric on your seatbelt? That is a load limiter – and the stitching on that fold is designed to rip and release the extra fabric when excess force is applied. More advanced load limiters use a torsion bar in the retractor mechanism.
But are they any safer than conventional seat belts?
Well, according to one US study, by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, they are better:
In passenger cars, CUVs, and minivans, a belted driver or right-front passenger has an estimated 12.8 percent lower fatality risk if the belt is equipped with a pretensioner
And a follow up study showed that
a combination of pretensioners and load limiters significantly reduces HIC, chest acceleration, and chest deflection scores on 35 mph frontal NCAP tests.
Want to know more about how a pretensioner and force limiter works? This video will explain more.
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No wonder he moved to Ireland, if it ever happened him again, sure he’d be grand!!
Must have been an inspirational figure for David Drumm and Sean Fitzpatrick.
He only lost 1 billion, they lost 35 and counting
Subsequent actions have shown that neither David Drumm or Seanie Fitz are half the man Nick Leeson is.
1 billion was probably more 20 years ago
£1 billion in 95. Today would be about £4 billion give or take a couple of hundred million ish.
But as someone earlier quoted its only numbers on a screen. Face it the likes of most of us here will never see anything like that type like type of cash.
How could you go into work, day after day with the figures spiralling up like that?! Imagine the stress!
It puts today’s PowerPoint into perspective! :D
Sounds like father Ted when Ted and Dougal started to hammer the car to get the dent out of it
Nick proved what David Icke said in 1990 – there’s no such thing as money anymore, only numbers on a screen. Those numbers only matter to those of us beneath the pile because, without them, we can’t live. For the powers that be they are just likes chips in a casino.
So Icke once said something that wasn’t totally batshit insane. Duly noted. Wonder was this before or after his turquoise phase?
Ah will ye stop. Youll be telling me next ray d’arcy went back to rte.
He did wrong and did the time for it and has turned his life around. Fair play to him.
Too much greed and not enough fear.
those bankers are all sociopaths who are unable to feel remorse .. that’s why they’re able to do what they do
It’s only money
He’s gonna be the next minister for finance .
What an amazing story. They should make a movie about it!
Forget Barings.
He brought down Galway Utd….
-He was a young guy who happened to be a financial wizard.
-there is no ethics or morality in banking.
- put a young financial wizard in charge of front and back office banking activities in a culture of no morality or ethics and with probability…this will happen regularly.
- he deserved his jail sentence but so does the whole banking system.
Ah come on, he looks like a tool, this should have been picked up on during the interview…..
I lived in Singapore for a number of years and he’s still a legend of sorts there. Everyone has a “story” about him….how they once played football with him,how he once donated $1000 to some charity they were collecting for etc. There’s even a cocktail named in his honour at the bar he used to drink in (Harrys bar on Boat quay) called “The Bank Breaker”.
have your say