Campaign launched to ban lap belts in cars

A Hamilton paraplegic, who says she was nearly torn in half by the lap belt she wore in a car crash, is heading a campaign to have the belts banned.

Ana Marie Le Roux said she nearly died because she was wearing the wrong kind of seat belt, but the Government was doing nothing to ban them.

Campaign organiser Clive Matthew-Wilson said it had the support of St John Ambulance, the Consumer's Institute, and the New Zealand Car Safety Trust.

Ms Le Roux said the two-point lap belts were deadly but the Government was obstructing owners who wanted to upgrade their rear belts from two-point to three-point belts.

She said it was a simple procedure to upgrade a dangerous lap belt into a safer three-point belt.

Mr Matthew-Wilson said about a million cars had only lap belts in the rear.

He said: "We are going to be pressing for the outright ban on the import of vehicles with lap-only rear seat belts from June this year, and an active campaign to retrofit existing vehicles."

Mr Matthew-Wilson said the Government required an engineer's certificate for each conversion but that was not necessary.

An engineer could design three-point fittings for individual car models but the belts could be fitted by qualified fitters. The cars could be issued with a warrant of fitness once the upgrade had been checked against an engineer's drawing.

Huntly coroner Bob McDermott has also called for lap belts to be banned, after conducting an inquest into the fatal crash which left Ms Le Roux a paraplegic and suffering major internal organ damage.

- NZPA