Ford Motor Company has filed a patent for a system that could unlatch a vehicle’s seatbelts following an accident which may be used in future Ford vehicles, Ford Authority has learned.
The patent was filed on May 17th, 2022, published on February 6th, 2024, and assigned serial number 11891013.
The Ford Authority Take
Ford has filed several patents pertaining to ways its future vehicles may one day provide us with a safer mode of transportation, including ideas for an advanced occupant detection system, a seatbelt buckle vibration capability, and a wireless seatbelt monitoring system. Now, this newly filed patent keeps that trend going by introducing another, similar idea – this time, for a system that would be able to automatically unlatch a vehicle’s seatbelts following an accident – a feature that may be used in future Ford vehicles.
While seatbelts are proven lifesavers, once an accident has occurred, they can oftentimes present a vehicle’s occupants with another problem – they have to unlatch their seat belt to get out of the vehicle. In some cases, this isn’t exactly easy to do, however – such as when a vehicle is underwater or upside down, for example – which is precisely what motivated Ford to create this patent.
If this patent does come to fruition, we may soon see seat belts with built-in latch plates that are able to disengage the buckle automatically if it detects that an accident has occurred. It wouldn’t do this until the vehicle is stopped, of course, and only if a person is in the seat with their seat belt latched. It’s an interesting idea for certain, and one that very well could wind up being used in future Ford vehicles, where it may end up saving even more lives than regular seat belts already have over the years.
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Comment
Underwater makes sense to release the belt automatically, but in some crashes, someone else crashes into the scene 30-60 seconds after the initial crash, and it would be potentially worse if the first victims were unbuckled.