Sounds good, and I'm happy for both you and your former patients...but others here have. I too can personally attest to folks being cut out of seatbelts. I can also personally attest to a woman drowning in her car in about 5-6 feet of water due to a flooded underpass and a clogged storm sewer...and her inability to get out of the car. Yes...it isn't the norm. To an extent I agree with you...but that's exactly the point. If we're preparing for the norm, we're not preparing for anything. We all have the line we draw as to what is reasonable preparation and for whatever the reasons. However the seatbelt thing has happened enough that fire, search & rescue, and cops carry cutters. Could something that is so uncommon have spawned the wide array of cutters on the market over the years? It's food for thought. But to me, $20 per car (1 for each side) is cheap insurance for the seatbelt issue, and that of submerged cars.

My experiences w/civilian & military aircraft makes me believe that a jammed seatbelt/harness will not be a concern if the cockpit frame has been "modified" as a result of a hard landing that didn't necessarily use the wheels and/or a runway.

There have also been a lot of seat belt recalls over the years, I wonder how many of the jammed belts were in vehicles which had recalls but were never taken to get the replacements.
An unfortunate side effect of the stories of jammed seat belts is people like my MIL and SIL refuse to wear them using those stories as an excuse (of course they also have an excuse for not using a turn signal too).

I thinl they are not supposed top do that. i tried to buy one ata junk yard to fix to the underside of my seat for a strap to hold things in place and they wouldn't sell it to me since it was a liability issue.

Remember they need to also keep it simple. If they design it stronger it may take more pressure to buckle or unbuckle and then consumers wouldn't use them.

Unfortunatly people are like that everywhere and the person sitting in the next desk beside here would just ask somehting like is that the new wave or old one.
Wife had some girls over one night to study for a college test and they were talking about how guns were unnecessary and such, I told her afterward I wanted to go get one of mine to clean it at that time and she didn't think that would have been as funny as I. Those same college girls are the ones who would think a knife is evil too then borrow her leatherman squirt to cut a string off their clothes.
Pre 9/11 I used to go into the supreme court building of our state to work on computers/printers and wuld take my leatheran with me. Every once and a while the guard would tell my I can't take it so I would ask if they were providing me tools to do my job and would always be allowed to take it in then.

You are right : they are not supposed to sell such seatbelts from a crashed car, to be used again, as seatbelts.
But I guess cuting it off the car and then in shorter lengths to replace a strap on a bag is not a problem. And it effectively prevents using it ever again as a seatbelt !

Not the first time, won't be the last. A few years back (again in SOCAL) a crash on the 78 had motorists looking for some way to cut the belt keeping people in their car (young kid in the back seat IIRC). It seems that more and more often no one carries a knife when they should be a common tool. I bought one of the fully serrated Spyderco rescue models just to leave in my truck console as a just-in-case. Everyone should have a back-up to their seatbelt release.

RAS, I'm just currently on the market for a Spyderco knife (probably the Endura). I was just wondering if it should be 50/50 serrated. Can you easily cut seatbelts with a plain edge?

Thanks
Frankie

It usually takes a VERY sharp plain edge to cut thru seatbelt material in a short time, while a serrated edge will zip thru with ease...