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Checking for Damage: What to Spot on Your Car's Seat Belts

Posted by Artem Martynyuk on

Due to the pandemic, most car owners have fewer opportunities to take their car on frequent and long drives. Every chance to leave the house needs to be short and immediate to prevent any risk of getting infected by COVID-19. Thankfully, vaccination procedures are making it safer for people to be more active on the road. However, your car may not be in the best condition to drive in after a long time of staying inactive.

Besides checking your car’s oil, fuel, and air pressure levels, you also need to double-check other components. Your car’s Supplemental Restraint System (SRS) protects you from the risk of experiencing critical injuries during a car accident. Even though your car hasn’t gone through a car crash, that doesn’t mean your seat belts won’t wear down naturally over time.

Are you checking your seat belt for damage?

It’s unlikely that you’ve checked your seat belt after having a newly bought car for a few months. In fact, some car owners can go for years without ever checking their seat belts. With strict traffic laws concerning seat belt laws, people often go on autopilot to wear them but never check them for damage. Although your seat belt’s buckle can connect and lock, that doesn’t mean you’re free from the risk of critical injury from a car accident. This is why it’s necessary to double-check your seat belts for good measure.

In this article, we’ll share three parts you should check to confirm your seat belt’s durability and safety.

1. Buckle

The most noticeable damage you should check is if the buckle can lock and secure itself. Your seat may have a loose connection from the stalk, leading to loose connections or unreliable buckle locks.

2. Webbing

Your seat belt’s sash or webbing is made explicitly from material that stays frictionless for your comfort. However, it can experience two particular forms of damage over time. The more simple issue is a build-up of dirt and grime, causing the webbing to be too loose or tight. Unless you clean it thoroughly, you’ll have slow-moving retraction that won’t be enough to protect you during a car collision. The second form of damage also affects your webbing’s pretensioner.

3. Pretensioner

A seat belt pretensioner is responsible for retracting your seat belt’s webbing for a secure grip. Normally, you can pull and extend the webbing until its farthest point to manually trigger the tightening system of the pretensioner. As you allow the webbing to recoil, you’ll be unable to pull it back out until it recoils a certain length. This feature will automatically occur once your car senses a heavy collision.

By manually retracting your pretensioner’s function, you can detect if it’s slow, smooth, or rough during its retraction. You can also check if you can quickly pull out the webbing without any resistance from it. Any of these two complications mean that you should get your car checked for repairs or replacements.

Conclusion

The potential risks of having an ineffective seat belt can make you unprepared for a vehicular accident. Concussions, internal bleeding, bone fractures, and other complex injuries can be the outcome of your negligence. This is why it’s vital to know what potential complications your seat belt may have. Afterward, remember to seek out an SRS repair company to remedy or replace your car’s seat belts.

Although there are some DIY remedies for seat belt damage, it's best to replace it if it's no longer functioning properly. At Repair My SRS, we provide SRS repair services in Westfield, MA, for complications such as seat belt retractor and seat belt pretensioner repair. Check how our offered solutions can match your car's safety needs!


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