oh for goodness sake...unless you're driving a Prius, you're costing EVERYONE on the planet money each time you start your engine. Smokers are passively killing people and sucking the health care system dry due to all their related illnesses and drunkards (I like your avatar by the way) are responsible for 41% of all traffic deaths (so they're responsible for even more TA's where deaths don't occur!). We could go on all day about people in our society draining the economies of the world, but this is a Mitsubishi related forum so let's stick to the topic and if you feel that passionately about seat belts, go protest at Capitol Hill.

Ok I have a little diffrent POV on this one.

I think the seat belt is of course very useful and I always wear mine.

But I find the seat belt chime in the Lancer unnecessarily loud and stupid in a way! Here is my experience with it:

I always take off my belt when I'm in the drive thru as it makes it easier to move around and grab the food, order or get my wallet. As soon as I start moving a yard or two even at less than 5 mph I immediately get bombarded with the annoying LOUD chime which does NOT shut up until a minute (or is it two?)

I think the chime should be there but it needs to be a little less loud. German cars have the perfect chimes IMO, they are not too loud, not too low, just about the right amount of sound to politely remind you to fasten your seatbelt.

Just my opinion.

And P.s yes I've also been saved with a seatbelt in my life! Definitely the most important safety featuer in every car!

What kind of tree, and more importantly how big of a tree did you hit?! The fact that your airbag didn't come out means it wasn't a serious enough crash for it to deploy so maybe that's why you're still around and by the way what the hell kind of a driver are you to hit a TREE! :grin: :grin: :grin:

Just look at your Mazda 3 hitting a concrete slab at 40 mph:

Safety Test