On 1 Jan 2007 at 17:33, ZoboHerald@aol.com wrote:
> Jim Muller suggested that "Lots of cars had buzzers with switches
> on the belts and in the seats... That's crazy."
>
> Crazy? Sure! But so were the various seat belt buzzer/lamp
> reminders and the methods of making them work.
Yes indeed, all the buzzers were crazy, as were the ignition
lockouts. So crazy that Congress reversed themselves and then made
them all illegal. But that's not quite what I meant.
What I thought was crazy is that they would bother to tie it to the
gearbox at all. The functional result of such a switch is this: In
any other car that buzzer would buzz as soon as the ignition was
turned on. By wiring it through the gearbox it would wait to turn on
until the driver put the car in gear; a passenger could simply fasten
the belt but the driver would have to put the gearbox into neutral or
hold in the clutch, and then fasten the belt. That strikes me as
even more irritating than the buzzer itself, sort of like an umpire
waiting until a batter has jogged down to first base for ball four
before calling a strike. In addition, it added to the cost. So why
do it? Did some marketing dweeb think it would be less irritating to
put off for a moment the irritating buzz?
On the other hand, BL management didn't exactly have their act
together at the time.
--
Jim Muller
jimmuller@rcn.com
'80 Spitfire, '70 GT6+
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