Unrelated but also relevant to the story: My father's new car (a brand-new Nissan) starts yelling at you to put the seat belt on the second you start the car. It's really annoying because the rest of the car systems take their precious time to start up, so I like to start the car first so the stupid computers start booting and THEN put my seat belt on. But that means being bullied by a loud alarm every time someone uses that car. Why oh why? My Audi only starts the alarm once you actually start driving, and even then only if you go faster than 10km/h or something.
This is the safe thing to do. A bag heavy enough to set off the sensors (usually 10kg) is gonna kill someone if not belted in in an accident.
It is not uncommon for bags to go through the front windscreen and kill someone in the car that crashes into you.
With respect.
It's uncommon to crash.
It's rare to have a 10kg bag in your car.
It's vanishingly unlikely to have a 10kg bag in a position where it can fly through the front windshield and hit, and kill, someone in the car that crashes into you.
Of course there's enough kilometers driven that it happens, but that doesn't make it anywhere close to 'not uncommon'.
Unrelated too but in France you must put your seatbelts before starting the car. It’s the law.
the alarm mostly stressed me out more than realizing I was not wearing a seatbelt, which only made it harder to find a suitable exit so I could stop the car and put the belt on!
I think this is mostly an edge case though, because I probably held a much lower speed than expected in the parking lot due to being very inexperienced behind the wheel.
No idea about other countries, but in germany you are allowed to not wear the seatbelt while driving "walking speed". So that makes some sense.
Check your insurance policy.
In cases like you encountered with your dog, just put the seatbelt on your dog or bag / boxes. It's actually safer for you in case of a crash, they wont get flying into your face. If it's not possible, just put the seatbelt on under your dog just to silence the alarm
For reasons I don't understand, tactile push buttons, with physical feedback, for most tasks are increasingly being replaced with a touch screen you have to look at rather than looking at the road instead and just reaching over to the dashboard.
Hanlon's Razor? It feels like the national road safety bodies world wide, have dropped the ball on this one.
Not asking nicely for seat belt makes people actually use the seat belt. It’s saving bunch of people every year vs annoying me. And it sure does annoy me, but truth be told sometimes when I move the car just a bit the only reason I use seat belt is that the car is angry at me.
The only seat where the weight is guaranteed to be a human is the drivers seat. By all means, put an alarm on that seat, but the other seats can contain things other than passengers.
Use the boot, people; at worst, put stuff under the seat, never above.
Telephones. The original UK ringtone was explicitly designed to be as irritating as possible (some really weird time signature, I think?)
Unfortunately, one thing he learned is that every measure of forceful compliance is consistently more successful in preventing accidents and deaths. Seatbelts save lives, but they had to be made compulsory by law to drill the concept into people; and even with that, it takes un-inescapable annoyances like this alarm to get into compliance that last 5-10% of stubborn idiots who just won't do the right thing. Full-face helmets save lives, but so many people insist in using pointless "bowls" or even nothing at all. Respecting speed limits save lives, but it takes speed cameras to actually persuade people to do that. Etc etc.
The technical implementations can always improve, of course. And tbh, it takes nothing to fix the issue reported: just fasten the belt "empty" when you have the dog (and accept the poor thing will not survive an impact...). The industry is what it is because People Are Bad At Risk-Assessment, and that's that.
I firmly believe that it's not the government's or automakers role to keep me from harming myself - but it is the governments role to protect others from being harmed by me. Consequently, I believe the government should outlaw drunk driving as it endangers others, but it should not force me to wear a helmet on a motorcycle.
Just to be clear: I absolutely believe you SHOULD wear a helmet while motorcycling - but I believe if I choose not to and by doing so am only endangering myself, that's my choice.
I hear you, but - on the road you're not alone even after you die. Someone will have to pick up your remains, see your brain splattered all over the road, and live with the trauma forever. Someone will have to try and resuscitate you, taking time that could be spent helping someone else. Worse, partial helmets could save your life but still get you partially paralized or disfigured, which would further burden society and yourself (treatment etc).
Note I'm a rider myself (bonneville ftw), and yeah full-face helmet doesn't fit my Easy Rider fantasy, but if it spares myself and others from the worst consequences, I'm ok with it.
moving fast enough to hurt or kill you in a car means you're going fast enough to damage or kill whatever you hit, too. even if that turns out to be a ditch or tree, you're still running into something.
pulling your corpse and smashed vehicle out of a ditch is going to cost someone something, even if no one else died.
She triggered the seat belt alarm, but not straight away, only once we were on the German Autobahn. It showed the icon on the dashboard, then it started beeping. Then it started beeping louder. Finally, it settled into a loud, high pitched beep that continued throughout my drive, designed to force me to obey.
This is directly dangerous. I'm going 130km/h - what the fuck am I supposed to do about the seatbelts now? Not that I even wanted to...
It is this idea of "forcing your customer to obey by inflicting discomfort" that's puzzling me. I can't think of any other industry or product that would think this would be a good idea. Just show me the damn icon and if I decide to ignore it, that's my choice...