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A seat belt, sometimes called a safety belt, is a safety harness designed to secure the occupant of a vehicle against harmful movement that may result from a collision or a sudden stop. more...

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As part of an overall occupant restraint system, seat belts are intended to reduce injuries by stopping the wearer from hitting hard interior elements of the vehicle or other passengers (the so-called second impact) and by preventing the passenger from being thrown from the vehicle.

Types of seat belts

Lap: Adjustable strap that goes over the waist. Used frequently in older cars, now uncommon except in some rear middle seats. Passenger aircraft seats also use lap seat belts.; Sash: Adjustable strap that goes over the shoulder. Used mainly in the 1960s, but of limited benefit because it is very easy to slip out of in a collision.; Lap and Sash: Combination of the two above (two separate belts). Mainly used in the 1960s and 1970s and still today in small aircraft. Generally superseded by three-point design.; Three-point: Similar to the lap and sash, but one single continuous length of webbing. Both three-point and lap-and-sash belts help spread out the energy of the moving body in a collision over the chest, pelvis, and shoulders. Until the 1980s three-point belts were commonly available only in the front seats of cars, the back seats having only lap belts. Evidence of the potential for lap belts to cause separation of the lumbar vertebrae and the sometimes associated paralysis, or "seat belt syndrome", has led to a revision of passenger safety regulations in nearly all of the developed world requiring that all seats in a vehicle be equipped with three-point belts. Since September 1, 2007, all new cars sold in the U.S. require a lap and shoulder belt in the center rear.; Criss-cross: Experimental safety belt presented in the Volvo SCC. It forms a cross-brace across the chest.;

Five-point harnesses: Safer but more restrictive than most other seat belt types. They are typically found in child safety seats and in racing cars. The lap portion is connected to a belt between the legs and there are two shoulder belts, making a total of five points of attachment to the seat. (Strictly speaking, harnesses are never to be fastened to the seat—they should be fastened to the frame/sub-frame of the automobile.); Six-point harnesses: Similar to a five-point harness but includes an extra belt between the legs, which is seen by some to be a weaker point than the other parts. These belts are used mainly in racing. In NASCAR, the six-point harness became popular after the death of Dale Earnhardt. Earnhardt was wearing a five-point harness when he suffered his fatal crash. As it was first thought that his belt had broken, some teams ordered a six-point harness in response.; Seven-point harnesses (5+2): Aerobatic aircraft frequently use a combination harness consisting of a five-point harness with a redundant lap-belt attached to a different part of the airframe. While providing redundancy for negative-g maneuvers (which lift the pilot out of the seat), they also require the pilot to un-latch two harnesses if it is necessary to parachute from a failed aircraft.;

Read more at Wikipedia.org