Auto Gossip

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31831, 8 November 1968, Page 9

Auto Gossip

Attitude to Belts What should be the attitude of car salesmen to seatbelts? Since they are a proven safety feature, I feel that salesmen should encourage their new-car customers to use the belts as well as fit them. But this, apparently, is a view that some new-car salesmen do not share, says one of my informants. Irate Customer He was standing in the showroom of a large Christchurch new-car franchiseholder when an irate woman customer came in. She approached two salesmen, and entered into an argument with them about the seat-belts that had been fitted to her new car. The firm had fitted the most expensive type of belt without consulting her at all, she said. If she had had a choice, she would have specified a cheaper belt. Fair enough, a reasonable complaint—but more was yet to come.

Useless Novelty “I realise that we are forced by law to fit the wretched things, but they are no good—l’ll never use them —so I wanted only the cheapest sort,” the woman said. The two salesmen, however, instead of politely suggesting that belts might be of use and there might be a reason for the regulation, heartily agreed that seat-belts were a useless novelty. “I never use them,” one said. “They are no use at all.” Drivers Discouraged When one considers all the publicity given the efficacy of seat belts, all the criticisms that have been answered, all the support given by medical and safety authorities and by motor-trade organisations, the attitude of the salesmen is very difficult to understand. He wondered, my informant said, how many motorists these salesmen might have discouraged from using seat belts. He hoped no motorist would come to harm as a result of being discouraged from using seat belts by these "experts.” Not Correct Equally difficult to understand is a letter on seat belts which recently appeared in a magazine with Dominion-wide circulation. The correspondent condemned all seat belts as both useless and dangerous, and said the Transport Department traffic officers in his locality had told him belts were dangerous, and that they never wore them. Knowing the thinking of the department and its officers on this score I am in no doubt that this statement is utterly false. Remarkable, is it not, the lengths to which people will go to condemn something aimed at saving them from death or injury? Quote of the Week “One of the hard facts of economic life which the railways have had to swallow in this motorised age is that once a family gets a car it is unlikely ever again to go on holiday by train.”—John Langley, in the “Daily Telegraph.”