Thread: 1970 Declare War On Ten Thirty Four

Originally Posted by JDNSW

My family started to fit seat belts to cars after an uncle of mine collapsed from heat exhaustion while stuck in traffic 9on a long weekend) in Gosford in 1960 in his A60. He, his wife, and a neice, all in the front seat, suffered quite severe injuries (uncle; teeth and face, niece, facial injuries, wife, facial and knee injuries) despite the fact that he was doing less than 10kph when he hit a light post. It was so obvious that with seat belts they would have been uninjured, that it put a number of relatives on the road to fitting seat belts.

Yeah thanks John, I wasn't going to fit seat belts to the '49 Dodge I'm renovating, but Ive just ordered a pair of Lap sash Retracts and a Lap belt for the centre of the bench seat. Thats another job added to the ever increasing list.

Once bought a car in NSW that was only a month out of its annual inspection and drove it home to QLD where my local garage did the RWC so I could reregister in QLD.

The garage was owned by a friend and he called me come and have a look as was worried what I would say as the car would not pass the RWC due to some fairly serious suspension problems that had been there for some time. So much for the stringent NSW checks. These were items that were required to be checked under the NSW system that had been passed. We will not mention the rust that came free of charge

The car had also been checked by NRMA who had given it a clean bill of heath with nothing worth mentioning found other than the fog lights switch not turning off the head lights.

These kinds of checks are loved by the motor trade in the U.K. as they are a profit earner. Add in regular scare stories in the press to make sure people believe they would all die if the checks were not required.

There is a proposal to make the checks start at 4 years as 3 year old cars are passing without problems and then each second year. Being fought by motor trade on emotional grounds not the drastic created by their checks.

The only study I have seen on the results of annual inspections and not having them was actually done in Australia. They compared South Australia to another state. Cannot remember which that had these inspections. They found an initial 12 month period where some older cars went off the road other than that they could not find any significant statical differences between the two. A little vague however was a few years ago was involved in this.