supercharged 850 wrote:
The laws are quite "however you interpret them".
Same for seat belts.... if it came out with none, then you dont need em. But fitting illegal ones (eg: a harness) will get you defected.
Some things are a bit strange.
Yes, I'm confused by this as well.
My Moke has a cutsom roll bar to CAMS specs for Motorkhanas. The problem is that if I fit the top mount of lap-sash seat belts to the roll bar, technically I have modified a set belt mount, as the car originally had only lap belts. So I would need an engineer's certificate.
The annoying part is probably 50%+ of the Mokes on Australian roads have a non standard roll bar (home made, professional or dealer fitment etc). Many of the so-called Californian roll bars were actually a lightweight dealer fitted "seat belt mount", which offered no real rollover protection. Plus the dealers used whichever supplier they liked, so one fitted in QLD would be completely different from Vic etc.
Quite rightly CAMS won't allow just lap belts. So I need harnesses or a lap-sash belt.
So my choices are:
- I can use lap belts for the road and harnesses for motorsport. This what I currentlky do. But one small shunt on the road and I'd probably decapitate myself on the dash.
- If I fit a crap "Californian roll bar", I can legally run lap-sash seat belts in both motorkhanas (current CAMS regs) and on the road. But it offers no real protection.
- If I use the harnesses on the road, I can be defected.
- If I modify the roll bar to fit lap-sash belts I can be defected. (Reality is I'd probably get away with this one - tell the cops it's an original fitment.)
But here's where it gets interesting!
What if I use both the lap belt AND the harnesses on the road? I haven't modified the original belts in any way, but I have added the extra safety of the harnesses I want.
Hmmm...
