Safety is a top priority for car manufacturers, and technology is helping to make vehicles safer. A new innovation could revolutionize the humble seatbelt.
Imagine a seatbelt that adjusts to the person wearing it and the road conditions. This is what Volvo Cars has just unveiled – a multi-adaptive safety belt that uses real-time data from the car’s advanced sensors to personalize protection.
How it works
The new belt uses data from interior and exterior sensors to adapt to the driver’s height, weight, body shape, and seat position. For example, a taller driver in a severe crash would get a higher load setting to reduce head injury risk. A smaller driver in a minor crash would get a lower load setting to reduce rib fracture risk.
This personalization is made possible by a significant increase in load-limiting profile variations, which generate the force applied to the driver in a crash. Traditional seatbelts use limiters to control the force applied to the body, but the new multi-adaptive belt expands these profiles from three to eleven, allowing for optimized performance in every situation.
Key differences
The new belt is different from traditional seatbelts in several ways. It can use data from various sensors, including exterior, interior, and collision sensors. This allows the car’s system to analyze the unique characteristics of a crash – such as direction, speed, and passenger posture – and share that information with the seatbelt.
With this data, the system selects the most suitable configuration. The multi-adaptive belt will debut in the upcoming all-electric Volvo EX60 in 2026 and will continue to improve through over-the-air software updates.
According to Åsa Haglund, director of the Volvo Cars Safety Centre, “this marks a major update to the modern three-point seatbelt, a Volvo invention introduced in 1959, which is estimated to have saved over one million lives.”
The future of road safety is looking brighter, thanks to innovations like the multi-adaptive seatbelt. As technology continues to advance, we can expect to see even more exciting developments in the world of automotive safety.