Sept. 6th, 2007
Anchorage Daily News, Page: B4
Byline: Alex Sheshunoff
For Whom the Seat-Belt Bell Tolls, Tolls ...
My wife and I recently bought a Toyota Highlander. It's fine, except that if you don't buckle your seat belt, the reminder chime beeps 63 times. Yes, I counted. We also have a 1997 Toyota Camry. Its reminder chime beeps only five times. Curious what might be the cause, I called up the dealer.
"It's the law," he said. "You have to have it." "
It beeps 63 times. Can I disconnect it?"
"No. It's against the law."
For the record, I'm not one of those lead-footed fellows to drive down the Glenn while yelling, "What's the point of having insurance if you don't take risks?" In fact, I use my seat belt 99 percent of the time. But I also like to use a drive-up ATM or check my mailbox without initiating my own test of the Emergency Broadcast System.
As any reasonable person would do, I next called the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. An official there told me that it is, in fact, illegal.
"It's as though we have safety inflation," I said to my wife when I got off the phone.
"OK," she said. "But the baby is crying."
"Each year, we get a few more beeps. I have to do something about this. I have to take a stand."
"My husband, the Rosa Parks of the seat belt chime. Can you hand me that blanket?"
"From five to 63 times? That's an annual increase of ... let's see ... over 8 percent!"
"Honey, maybe you should, you know, get some exercise."
I did. I went for a jog and then I called Toyota U.S.A. headquarters in Torrance, California.
"I don't want to sound like your mother," Denise Morrissey in public affairs said, sounding very much like my mother. "But you really should have your seat belt on any time the car is moving."
"Can I disengage it?"
"That would be against the law," she said.
So like many an irked person with time on his hands, I went to an online forum. There I found, if not hundreds, at least several other people similarly annoyed by the seat belt chime. And one of them, SeaDragon, bless him, even found a way to disconnect it. But he warns that unless you do it just right -- clip a certain wire, twist a spring just so -- you could also disconnect the airbag. I took a pass. Like my grandmother's first husband, I "couldn't pour beer out of a boot if the instructions were written on the sole."
Most online complaints, however, were directed toward Ford. The Ford Motor Co., always an innovator, has recently introduced its "BeltMinder" system. It beeps for five minutes! They've found that it increases seatbelt usage by a whopping 5 percent. The situation is about to get worse. Along with the wars on drugs and Islamic extremism, our government is now taking on hubris and bad judgment.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration wants to copy Ford's "BeltMinder" and mandate an industry-wide, five-minute seat belt chime. If our government were an action hero, its name would be Overreactor. I presume the next step to force compliance will be removing the regulator from seat warmers, crank those fellas up to 225 degrees. That might get another 5 percent.
I know that I am being small and that some safety laws are reasonable. The one about driving on the right, for instance, is arbitrary but efficient. What chaps my hide, to use a second cowboy metaphor, is when our lawmakers don't fully consider the costs of the benefits.
Now I'm going for a bike ride on the coastal trail. But don't worry about my safety -- my bike has a bell. It's audible from no less than 100 feet. Because it's the law.
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Alex Sheshunoff is a writer living in Anchorage.
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