Fifty years of analyzed road accidents, tens of thousands of people involved, thousands of hours of research. All this to arrive at a simple conclusion: today's seat belts are not smart enough. Volvo knows this well, since it invented the three-point belt in 1959 and gave it to the world by giving up the patent.
Now the Swedish company is about to take the next step. The multi-adaptive seat belts As soon as you “change” the EX60, they don’t just hold you back during a crash: they study your body, understand the situation and adapt instantly. It is the evolution that has been missing for 65 years.
How Smart Seat Belts Work
The system that Volvo calls “multi-adaptive safety belt” It's a leap forward compared to traditional belts. If the current ones offer only three load limiting profiles, these new belts have eleven. And an artificial intelligence that governs them.
Internal and external sensors collect real-time data on the height, weight, body shape and position of the passenger seat. Not only that, the system also takes into account the direction and speed of the vehicle. All this information is processed and transmitted to the belt “in the blink of an eye”, allowing for optimized protection for each individual person.
If you are of large build, you will receive a greater load to reduce the risk of head injuries in the event of a serious accident.. Conversely, if you have a smaller build, the system will apply less force to prevent rib injuries in the event of minor impacts.
The research behind the innovation
The idea didn't come out of nowhere. Volvo has used information gathered over five decades of security research and a database of more than 80.000 people involved in real-world accidents. This wealth of knowledge has allowed engineers to understand exactly how to customize protection.
Asa Haglund, head of the Volvo Cars Safety Centre, explains:
“The multi-adaptive system represents another milestone in automotive safety and a great example of how we are using real-time data with the ambition of saving millions more lives.”
Seat belts, from 1959 to today: the evolution continues
The history of Volvo's safety belts began in 1959, when engineer Nils bohlin designed the modern three-point seat belt. As we have reported in the past, that invention saved over a million lives, so much so that the German Patent Office included it among the eight most useful inventions for humanity in the last 100 years.
Now, 65 years later, Volvo is taking another major step. Multi-adaptive seatbelts are not just passive: they are active, intelligent, personalized.
Towards the future of adaptive safety
The system is designed to improve over time through over-the-air software updates. Volvo plans to release improvements as it gathers more data and insights from real-world use.
The technology, as mentioned, will debut on the Volvo EX60, the electric mid-size SUV that will arrive in 2026. This model will represent the electric successor to the current XC60 and will be the first to use the new SPA3 platform.
While the auto industry often focuses on flashy technologies like autonomous driving, Volvo continues to refine the most basic elements of safety. Because, as one of the company's founders said in 1936: "A car is driven by people. The fundamental principle for all construction work is and must be safety."
Adaptive seat belts aren’t just a technological breakthrough: they’re proof that the most important innovation is often the one that saves lives—all of them, one at a time.
