Should Airplanes Have Shoulder Seat Belts?

Cars have shoulder seat belts to protect passengers, so why not large airplanes? Learn the physics involved, plus why buckling up on planes is important, in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Lauren vog obam here. When the fastened seatbelt sign flashes
on in airplanes, with its accompanying provenly gentle ding, it's
often met with equal parts annoyance and resignation, like, what again,
really do I have to The answer, of course, is yes,

(00:23):
you really have to. It's for the good of your
skull and that's where you keep your brain. We spoke
with Richard mcspaden, the executive director of the Aircraft Owners
and Pilots Association's Air Safety Institute. He said, I think
it's the old it's not going to happen to me syndrome.
Aviation accidents are so rare that people say, what are
the odds that's going to happen to me? And I

(00:44):
would agree with them that the odds are extremely low,
But he continued, I would then add that even though
the odds are low, the consequences of something happening can
be pretty significant. Even if it's just a bump in turbulence.
If you're not strapped in right, your head could hit
the top of that airplane. That can result in a
serious injury. And it's so effortless to drop a seatbelt
around you, and he's right. Though folks of above average

(01:07):
size may argue with the effortlessness of those seat belts,
but airplane companies are working on that, and in flight
turbulence is more than a mere nuisance. The Federal Aviation Administration,
or f a A, reports that fifty eight people are
injured by turbulence on airplanes every year while not wearing
their seatbelts. Most are not ticket holding passengers. Of the
two hundred and ninety eight serious injuries from turbulence that

(01:29):
the f a A recorded from eight hundred and eighty
four involved flight attendants. A simple lap belt or even
other restraints like shoulder harnesses, may not be enough to
save a life if an airliner undergoes a catastrophic midair failure,
but the rare accidents like that are not the main
reasons for seat belts on airplanes. They're designed to protect
you from the airplane during flight. Oatherpool and American Airlines

(01:53):
flight attendant and author put it this way to the Telegraph.
In the reason you must wear a seat belt, flight
crew include it is because you don't want the plane
coming down on you. People think they're lifted up in
the air during turbulence. But the truth is the plane drops,
it comes down hard, and it comes down fast, and
that's how passengers get injured by getting hit on the

(02:13):
head by an airplane. It's simple physics, Newton's first law
of motion. A body at rest will remain at rest
unless an outside force acts on it. But let's unpack that.
If you're not wearing a seat belt on an airplane
that drops suddenly, which often happens with turbulence, you're the
one at rest. You'll stay at rest as the plane
very literally drops out from under you. If you're strapped in,

(02:35):
the seatbelt serves as an outside force acting on you,
taking you with the plane as it drops, and saving
you from bonking your head on that overhead been above you.
Mc batten said. It allows you to stay in place
and ride along with the airplane. It's just that added
safety margin that if something unexpected happens, you're still going
to stay with the airplane. But if that's the case,

(02:57):
would shoulder harnesses be better? A little reasoning might suggest
that if a lap belt is good while flying, a
shoulder harness like those in cars and those in smaller
so called general aviation planes would be even better. Indeed,
shoulder belts or harnesses might help, according to some experts.
Mcpadden said the answer would be yes. It certainly would

(03:18):
help because it would prevent the movement of the upper
torso aggressively in terms of some kind of sudden impact.
How you can do that is another question. Entirely, such
harnesses would be costly to install and trickier to get
to work correctly on bigger commercial planes that probably be
uncomfortable on longer flights, And because of all of that,
wearing shoulder harnesses might meet a lot of resistance from

(03:41):
the flying public. In large commercial airlines, lap belts do
the trick against the vertical forces typically experienced in a
malfunction or crash. In smaller aircraft, though, shoulder harnesses work
and work well, which is why they are required for
all seats in all small airplanes manufactured since December twelve.
Used with lap belts, shoulder harnesses in smaller planes have

(04:02):
been shown to reduce serious injuries from accidents by percent
in fatalities by twenty according to the f a A. Ironically,
the safety record of commercial airlines may be the overwhelming
reason that shoulder harnesses have not been required of large
passenger planes. In seventeen, no one was killed in a
commercial jet airliner incident anywhere in the world, making it

(04:24):
the safest year ever for big passenger planes. In its
civil Aviation Safety Review for twenty seventeen, which examined accidents
on large passenger aircraft, the Dutch aviation consulting firm t
O seventy estimated that there were zero point zero eight
fatal accidents per million flights. That is a rate of
one fatal accident for every twelve million flights. With a

(04:47):
safety record like that, it's hard to argue that shoulder
harnesses would lower the risk of flying enough to offset
the costs, the effort, and the resistance that such a
major change would generate. Lat Belts, though they help, they
help a lot, so when flying it's probably best to
buckle up and stay that way. It's for your brain's
own good. Today's episode was written by John Donovan and

(05:12):
produced by Tyler Clang, with kind engineering assistance from Ramsay youngt.
For more on this and lots of other skull saving topics,
visit our home planet, how Stuff Works dot com.