By: Eric Peters
Just when you think it can’t possibly get any more ridiculous, it does. Volvo has come up with what it calls the “multi-adaptive safety belt.” Because apparently a simple seat belt isn’t safe enough.
Speaking of that. Notice how seat belts became safety belts? It is hard to put a finger precisely on the moment of this transition. Just as it is difficult to put a finger on when gay became something other than happy. Nevertheless, it happened – and it’s significant in that words are the means by which thoughts are formed and expressed.
Seat belt conjures different thoughts than safety belt does.
A seat belt is just that. Neutral thought. It is a belt and it is attached to the seat. A safety belt is the same but also more. One had better wear the thing, eh? Because if not, then you are not being safe, you see. The change in wording is deliberately intended to alter people’s thinking about seat belts, in order to elicit the wanted response. That being not only to “buckle up” but to regard anyone who chooses not to as someone who is dangerous because they are not being safe.
Volvo was once the safe car company. It catered to people who looked upon driving as a dangerous activity. Volvo pioneered the three-point shoulder-harness seatbelt (and even called it that for awhile) decades before the government began punishing drivers for not “buckling up,” a strange thing when you stop to think about it a little since the pretext given for most traffic offenses is that the offender’s actions might result in harm to others. But not “buckling up” presents no harm or even threat of harm to others. The person not “buckled up” might be hurt (or hurt worse) if there is a crash but it is preposterous to argue his not “buckling up” causes or even might cause harm to anyone else.
Yet it is now a punishable offense to not “buckle up.” It may as well be a punishable offense to not eat your veggies – and will likely come to that (and more) because once it is accepted that the government can punish you for offenses that cause no harm to anyone else but that may result in harm to you, then it has been accepted that government is our parent and we had better do as it says, for our own good.
Or else.
Back to Volvo. It made “safe” cars. Or – more finely – it made a name for itself as the seller of cars that offered more in the way of “safety” design and features (such as seat belts) than other brands of cars that emphasized other things. Imagine that. There was a time when buyers could choose a “safe” Volvo or another kind of car that maybe looked better to them, or that was lighter (and so got better gas mileage) or which was cheaper, which was of value to people who liked the idea of being free to choose to not have to buy things they did not feel the need for.
Like seat belts, for instance.
Imagine a time when you did not have to buy them – let alone wear them. It was a long time ago and so few remember. That is too bad because when people forget they come to think the way it is now is how it has always been – and always will be. They lose their frame of reference – a point of comparison.
Today, every vehicle is a Volvo in that every vehicle must be “safe” in that it must comply with a whole agenda of federally required “safety” regs that require or de facto require every new vehicle be built around at least four air bags (most new vehicles have six or more) and that they fold up like an accordion in a crash so as to absorb the impact of a crash without transferring the impact forces to the occupants within. That they have back-up cameras and achieved so many “stars” as regards how well they absorb impact forces in a crash.
And there’s nothing wrong with any of that – as such. It would be fine if Volvo were to offer all of those things – and more, including multi-adaptive safety belts. Provided other vehicle manufacturers were free to notoffer them so that those who didn’t want them were free to not have to buy them.
They aren’t, of course.
This has – ironically – taken away from Volvo the main thing that used to sell Volvos since every other vehicle manufacturer is now forced to sell the same thing. Whether Volvo – and Volvo people – understood the consequences of the government forcing every vehicle manufacturer to manufacture Volvos – is unclear. Nevertheless, that is precisely what has happened and it probably accounts for why Volvos don’t sell as well (as many) as they did when Volvo was the “safe” car brand.
So now Volvo wants to be even safer. It is going to offer the multi-adaptive safety belts in its new models. Seat belts that adjust to fit whatever the size of the person sitting in the seat happens to be – using lots of elaborate (and expensive to buy and to repair when they fail) gizmos.
No, correction. Volvo is not going to offer multi-adaptive safety belts It is going to make them standard. And then – wait for it – the other manufacturers will as well, in anticipation of a federal requirement that is coming as surely as digital dollars and a red-white-and-blue social credit scheme via Palantir, enabled by Trump.
Any vehicle that lacks multi-adaptive safety belts will naturally be derided as not being “safe” even before then – which will prompt the mandate.
Just as it is already not “safe” – and punishable – to drive without “buckling up” the seat belt that is now a safety belt that the government says you have to wear, or else.
. . .
