Road traffic accidents are sadly on the increase and as a result more and more people are now suffering injury; however some of these injuries are not actually caused by the road traffic accident but they can be caused by wearing a seatbelt; meaning many drivers and passengers who are involved in road traffic accidents are now suffering as a result of the one thing that is meant to protect them within a car.

Since 1983 you are permitted by law to have to wear a seatbelt within a car. Your seatbelt is your safety harness while you are travelling within a car; it is designed to secure you against harmful movement that can occur as a result of a collision or a sudden stop. They are intended to reduce injury by stopping you from hitting hard interiors of the vehicle and by preventing passengers from being thrown from the vehicle.

Seatbelts have gone through various changes since there introduction. They used to exist in various different forms such as a lap design, which is an adjustable strap that goes over your waist. This design was used a lot in older cars; however they are now uncommon expect when they are used in the rear of a car for the middle seat. Another design that passed through the ages was the sash design, which is an adjustable strap that goes over the shoulder. This design was mainly used in the 1960's; however it was soon discovered that they were of limited benefit as it is easy to slip out of this design when involved in a collision.

The seatbelts that we now find present in our cars are known as 3 point seat belts. These seatbelts are a lot similar to the lap and shoulder ones for the fact that they are like the two of them combined. These 3 point seat belts help to spread out the energy of the moving body in a collision over the chest, pelvis and shoulders. Until the 1980s three-point belts were commonly available only in the front seats of cars with the back seats only having lap seat belts but due to evidence emerging showing the potential for lap belts to cause the separation of the lumbar vertebrae and the sometimes associated paralysis, or seat belt syndrome, has led to a revision of passenger safety regulations in nearly all of the developed world requiring that all seats in a vehicle be equipped with 3 point seat belts.