Call To Ban Car Lapbelts Health Fitness

Canterbury surgeons dealing with a series of horrific car-crash injuries inflicted by lapbelts are calling for the restraints to be banned.

Most of the countries that supply New Zealand's new cars are outlawing the belts, but the Governnment said yesterday that it would not review their use in New Zealand.

Christchurch surgeons Grant Coulter and Spencer Beasley have written to the health and transport ministers warning that many people, including children, would die if lapbelts were not outlawed.

Their letter follows a series of accidents in Canterbury in recent years in which people wearing lapbelts suffered injuries while other passengers wearing diagonal belts escaped relatively unscathed.

"For as long as there is inaction, children and adults will continue to suffer massive Health Fitness, serious and often fatal injuries if they sit in the rear centre seats of many of our modern cars," the surgeons wrote.

The Transport Ministry said it was not planning a review of the restraints because research showed people rarely used a car's centre back-seat position.

But National transport spokesman Maurice Williamson said the party would consider reviewing the use of lapbelts should it win this year's election.

In December, a boy wearing a lapbelt suffered massive internal injuries that he was still recovering from after being in a car crash in North Canterbury.

His sister, who was also in the car, suffered only minor injuries because she was wearing a diagonal seatbelt.

Of eight family members involved in a Lewis Pass crash in January, the six wearing lapbelts suffered the worst injuries.

Coulter, Health Fitness a senior surgeon at Christchurch Hospital,Travel Health Insuranc told The Press he was baffled why new cars were still able to be fitted with the "deadly" lapbelts when it was clear how little they protected those wearing them.