Belt Up! Biglorryblog celebrates the 50th anniversary of the three-point seatbelt from Volvo...with a little videoclip

What strikes Biglorryblog as both interesting and highly commendable is that no sooner had Volvo patented the device than it gave free use of its patent to all other vehicle manufacturers and today the safety belt is a natural feature in virtually all trucks and cars. "That's why we can say that there's a bit of Volvo in every vehicle on the road - irrespective of make and model," Volvo Trucks' traffic and product safety director, Carl Johan Almqvist tells Biglorryblog. However, although the three-point belt has been around for half a century, its use is still worryingly low among truck drivers in some countries. Surpisingly so, on Swedish roads, only four out of ten truck drivers use the belt, while France, owing to tough legislation, has boosted safety belt use to 80%. Personally I wouldn't want to drive a truck that DIDN'T have a three-point seatbelt.... Meanwhile the Swedish truck maker tells me: "The consequences of not using the belt are well documented in Volvo Trucks' own accident research. Of 15 truck driver fatalities on Swedish roads over the past three years, for instance, only one was wearing a safety belt." "The human being does not have a built-in speedometer so we do not perceive speed as dangerous, especially not when we sit high up in a large vehicle. In a global perspective, every year a large number of drivers die while not wearing a safety belt and their lives might have been saved by the truck's most obvious safety feature. This is something we must rectify, a challenge that is as big as the development of new technologies for accident avoidance," adds Carl-Johan, who concludes: "We have safety belt reminders in our trucks, but ultimately it is the drivers themselves who must realise the risks they are taking when they drive without wearing the safety belt. Virtually our entire systematic safety approach is bypassed if the belt is not given the chance to hold the seat occupant securely in place during an accident. This applies equally if the driver is thrown around inside the cab or is thrown out of the cab if the truck rolls over." And for all you stat and trivia-fiends (of which BLB is one) The world's first vehicle with three-point safety belt as standard - a Volvo PV544 - was delivered in Karlstad, Sweden on August 13th in 1959.