One other thing about MVAs….everything you have in your vehicle that’s not secured is gonna be flying around inside like a missile if you collide with something. I’ve seen folks hit by full 20# propane bottles that went airborne from the back of an SUV. Even smaller items like binoculars or your rifle can put a serious hurt on you.

Shortly before I had started at the police garage, an office for in a wreck, and the shotgun, mounted to the front of the cage right behind the officer's head, came loose and cracked her hard in the skull, so one of the first projects I worked on was moving all the shotgun racks to the trunks.

X2

I've had a lot of 'experiences' in cars. As an car enthusiast, mechanic, firefighter and more , most on here (luckily) have never gone from 40+mph to zero mph in zero feet. It is a whole new realm of physics. Everything in the vehicle becomes a lethal object.

Whole different ball game. Those that have been there , know what I am talking about.

That doesn't make sense.

Exceptions do not make the rule. You are much more likely to survive a serious crash if you buckle-up; there is no question about it. I often have nephews ride with me up to the mountains, some of them are of the height that legally requires a car seat; I don't have car-seats, but I do make the buckle-up.

"Car Seat Expiration: How Long Are Car Seats Good For?
Keeping kids safe in the car is very important, and we all try to pick the best car seats for our youngest passengers. But here’s something you might not know: car seats don’t last forever. They actually have expiration dates, just like the food in your fridge."

Why is that? A dozen people putting on a pheasant (or deer) drive in a 5 acre field/woodlot absolutely should be wearing blaze. One person miles and miles from nowhere, on their own land, hunting deer in their own enclosed blind, in an area they've never so much as seen another human footprint... likely does not need to be.

My mistake . I might have not had my reading glasses on .

Yes they have expiration dates, but I wonder which component disintegrates over time necessitating the expiration date? You don't suppose it could be a ploy to sell more car seats.

I wonder who did the risk assessment between the probability of being cracked in the head or having the shotgun readily available when needed.

I wonder about these sorts of things...................

Probably nobody, I imagine. It was just convenient. Way back in the day, the cruiser builds were so simple that it took one guy a few hours to build one. Throw in a cage, a light bar (which just had power/ground), a radio, and a shotgun rack, and kick it out the door. I don't think much though was put into it.

By the time I left, we had farmed our cruiser builds to a private company that specialized.in it, but before that, I was the main guy doing the wiring and console, and another guy did the cage and seats and such. I was building big harnesses that ran from the console to the back of the car that were 2 inches thick and connected to multiple modules on both ends, and took 3 days to wire up, and another 3-4 days to install all the lights and seats and cages.

Anyway, now the shotguns are mounted in the trunk and are only for non-lethal rounds, so they don't need quick access to them. They have a gun rack mounted to the front cage for their ARs, but it used a handcuff-style lock along with a butt plate holder, so they were pretty secure.

The amazing thing is the one that sits in a box in the closet disintegrates at the same rate as the one sitting in the back yard under the sun all day.

The actual seatbelt webbing material deteriorates in the sun. Racecar 5 point harnesses have expiration dates for the same reason.

Car seatbelts don't, because 1. They mostly stay rolled up inside trim panels, out of the sun, and 2. It would be prohibitively expensive to replace them every few years.