Back in the 1960s, Chevron gas stations offered everyone an installed seatbelt for $5.
No diagonal shoulder strap back then. (Only one color, and that was silver). Stamped on the underside was
Davis Aircraft Supplies.
Meanwhile, back in Europe, debates were raging over installing a single lap belt versus a single shoulder belt.
Owner manuals from this period showed how to buckle up.
My next car was subjected to high-performance track speeds, so I got a
Schroth 6-point seatbelt. (German-made, with two bolts for the two shoulder belts, two more bolts for the 3-inch lap belts, and two more bolts holding the 6-way connector to the floor in front). The
front floor belts were to keep the driver from sliding out from under the other belts.
At a cost of nearly $300, I had to install it myself!
For the driver, arranging all the belts--while wriggling to snug them all down--took some time.
This growing aspect of safety spelled the end of "LeMans-starts" in auto racing. Most often, running across the track, jumping in your race car and starting to race, meant fastening seatbelts on the LeMans straight--where leaders often exceeded 200-MPH!
The Le Mans start was prohibited in 1970. (With good cause).
Once tightly cinched-in, I realized I'd been using the steering wheel as a support in hard cornering, so the added ease of steering control was vastly improved.
Since steering control is the responsibility of the driver, the driver should always be positioned behind the wheel. This isn't always possible after getting hit at highway speeds. (Or after a "
shunt", as the British call it).