ABOUT US

Mission Statement

     The mission of AORC is to reduce traffic deaths and injuries by providing the motoring public with reliable and effective occupant restraint systems. Our goal is to save more lives by encouraging seat belt use and a greater knowledge of air bag systems.

Our History

The Automotive Occupants Restraints Council (AORC) was formally organized as the American Seat Belt Council (ASBC) in early 1961, however its history - and that of safety belts - really goes back several years prior. For many years, future ASBC members such as Irvin Air Chute, Davis Aircraft and American Safety Equipment had been manufacturing and supplying seat belts for military, private and commercial aircraft. In the 1920's Irvin Air Chute received an order for seat belts for Barney Oldfield's Indianapolis 500 racecar and it is believed these may have been the first automotive seat belts made and sold. After that, the three above-mentioned firms, plus a couple of California companies like Ray Brown Automotive and Superior Industries, made and sold belts for racecars, rally cars and other competition vehicles, as well as a few hundred safety conscious motorists, who installed the belts into their own cars.

This was the state of the industry until 1955 when Ford Motor Company announced that a "safety package," including seat belts, padded dashboard and sun visors, would be offered as an option for their 1956 model year. Ford expected this option would be ordered in substantial volume. As a result, there was a rush of companies getting into the seat belt business - including manufacturers of automotive hardware, wheels, mirrors, luggage racks, seat covers, cargo straps, etc. A group of these companies felt it advisable to form a trade association to represent this new industry, and the result was the American Safety Belt Institute (ASBI) that held its first organizational meeting in Chicago in 1956. Representatives from webbing, yarn, hardware and safety equipment manufacturers came to that meeting and eventually the ASBI claimed more than 100 member companies. Dozens of firms started to manufacture seat belts and their representatives besieged Ford, Chrysler, American Motors and General Motors in an attempt to obtain production orders. Ford placed small orders with three suppliers, but their "safety package" never succeeded as forecast and a year or two later there was a glut of unsold safety belts in inventories. Most of the companies got out of the business as quickly as they got in, and safety belts were sold for as little as $1.00 each.
    
Despite this early setback, pioneering engineers in the auto companies continued to design, test and promote safety belts. One of these pioneers was Roy Huessler of Chrysler, who contributed greatly to the early seat belt programs of the automotive industry.

In 1962 Irvin Air Chute was awarded a production contract by General Motors to supply two safety belts for each Corvette manufactured. In a corner of Irvin's Lexington, Kentucky plant, where 100' diameter cargo chutes, paratroop chutes, high-speed escape chutes and Mercury space capsule recovery systems were being produced, four machine operator, a supervisor and a quality control officer were turning out 2400 seat belts each month for Corvettes. This was a beginning of the seat belt production lines that ultimately produced thousands of belts per day. At the same time, several companies like Irvin, Davis, and American Safety and others were producing belts for the aftermarket; for customers such as NAPA, Shell Oil, Sears and Pure Oil, packaged and sold under those brand names. Irvin organized one of the earliest successful promotions of seat belts in a national program developed with the Junior Chamber of Commerce (Jaycees). Local Jaycees chapters adopted seat belts as both a public service and a fund raising program for their for their organization. Jaycees members went house to house selling seat belts and promoting their safety benefits. Installation locations were set up in each town with a Jaycees chapter and the belts were installed in cars free of charge, although this service was a short-lived due to the potential insurance liability...after a Jaycee group in Iowa pierced a gas line of a Lincoln during on of its installations! Though this innovative program, the 300,000 Jaycees nationwide greatly increased public awareness of the lifesaving benefit of seat belts and also provided their organization with needed revenue at the same time.
     
In the early 60's, the National Safety Council (NSC) and the Advertising Council decided to conduct a two-year public education program to promote the use of seat belts in automobiles. Millions of dollars worth of publicity was generated for this program with spokesman such as racecar drivers, celebrities, and police officers. A catchy theme song set to the tune of the old college fight song, "buckle Down Winsocki" was heard regularly over the nations' radio during the campaign. Advertising council members provided their creative talent and services pro bono, and the ads promoted seat belts appeared in more than 170 publications at no cost. An article in Traffic Safety Magazine described the success of the program thusly: "Newspapers with 25 million circulation carried 2.5 million lines of ads, in-house magazines, ran 1500 ads, radio and TV stations and major networks pulled out all stops."

One of the conditions for the campaign specified by the National Safety Council and Advertising Council was for an organization to supervise and police the industry to insure product quality, ethics and good business practices. The Narrow Fabrics Institute (NFI), a well respected trade association of webbing and fiber manufacturers, was approached to provide this kind of oversight. This led to the formation of the American Seat Belt Council, which was renamed 'Automotive Occupant Restraints Council' in 1998.

The American Seat Belt Council and the Evolution of the industry American Seat Belt Council

The Council held its organizing meeting in Chicago in June of 1961 with NFI guiding the meeting, Many of the NFI members, including Weavings, Phoenix Trimming, Caprolan Division of Allied, DuPont fibers and Charley Company joined the new organization. Seat belt manufacturers Irvin Industries, Jeffery-Allen Industries, Ray Brown Automotive, Greenfield Company, Yankee Metal Products, Davis Aircraft, American Safety Equipment, Rose Manufacturing, General Tube, Superior Industries, Hamill Manufacturing (later acquired by Firestone, which was acquired by TRW), Jim Robbins Company (later acquired by Allied then by Breed), Cummings & Sanders Company and Pontonier Division of Gateway Industries, were either founding members or joined the organization soon after. Many of the largest thread and webbing manufacturers also were early ASBC members, including Burlington Webbing, Industrial Webbing, DuPont company, Monsanto and Threads Inc. Many of these companies are still active members in the Council today, although mergers and acquisitions have changed the names. Charles H. Pulley, of Irvin Industries, was elected as the president and served two terms, followed by Ray Brown and Lew Borick of Superior Industries, who each served one term. Thereafter, Pulley served as council President until his retirement in 1998, when George Kirchoff succeeded him.
     
The American Seat Belt Council was established to educate the public and promote seat belt use as well as to insure the quality of those seat belts. The Council's three principal missions were:

1. Testing and certification of the industry products
2. Education of the public about the benefits and function of seat belts
3. Promote legislation to require seat belt use nationally

In the early days of seat belt manufacture, there was no test/certification standard specifically for automobile seat belts - but there was a government standard, GSA-JJB-185A, designed for testing aircraft belts. This was the standard used initially as the Council began is test/certification program to assure product quality in accordance with the NSC guidelines for the new organization. Samples were periodically selected randomly and without advanced notice from each member's production line and sent to a testing laboratory - Robert Hunt Labs or Underwriters Laboratory - and tested to the applicable standard. Those that passed were permitted to attach the ASBC Seal of Approval to each item and to continue to do so long as their product passed the testing. The Seal of Approval was sold to each qualifying member at $.01 per item to defray the cost of the testing/certification. The aircraft belt standard was not completely satisfactory and in 1962, the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), with input from representatives of ASBC, issued an industry standard - SAEJ4 - that upgraded the requirements in automotive seat belts as compared to aircraft belts. This standard was later furthered upgraded to SAE J4C, which became the basis for a future federal standard and ultimately became the standard used by the Council for its testing certification program. When the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was formed in 1966, engineers in that agency set about preparing a NHTSA standard for automobile seat belts, using the SAE-J4C as a starting point. Personnel from the Council, SAE and the auto industry were consulted and assisted in this project and NHTSA Federal Motor Vehicle Standard 109 was issued in February 1967, which hence became the standard for the industry. Once again, the ASBC had an important role in setting the standards for automotive safety, Once the federal standard was adopted; the Council terminated its test/certification program and devoted the majority of its efforts and funds to other programs. These programs focused on public education to inform the motoring public and the media about the benefits of safety belts and to urge their regular usage; legislative support to urge and assist state legislatures and Congress to enact seat belt use laws; and publicizing the American Seat Belt Council as a resource for technical and product information and data.
     
The original per item fee charged for the ASBC "Seal of Approval" was eventually expanded as the basis for membership fees for Council members. Belt Assembly manufacturers paid $.05 for each belt assembly shipped; webbing producers paid $.01 for each yard of webbing sold; hardware manufacturers paid a flat fee for each buckle or anchor fitting shipped. These basic fees were often supplemental with additional contributions from the membership to pay for public education programs or special projects. With the consolidation of the industry in later years, Council dues were changed to standard annual fees based on specific membership categories.
     
When the Department of transportation mandated seat belts for all cars in 1968, the aftermarket for belts began to drop dramatically. Only those ASBC member companies with contracts to produce seat belts for the automobile companies prospered. As a result, there was a dramatic consolidation in the industry, with many of the smaller manufacturers, who depended primarily on aftermarket sales, dropping out of the industry and the Council. At this crucial time, ASBC membership dwindled to less than a dozen firms. From the beginning, the administrative and financial functions of the Council had been carried out by association management firms; first by Penna Associates of New Rochelle, New York and later by the Cloney Group of West Palm Beach, Florida. In a cost-saving measure aimed at preserving the Council and its important mission, the ASBC gave up its outside management and public relations firms and moved its administrative offices to Lexington, Kentucky, where President Chuck Pulley took over the financial and administrative duties on a pro bono basis during this down period.
     
In the 1980's, the seat belt industry was cast by the media as opponents of automobile air bags - the emerging technology in occupant restraints - giving the public the impression that the industry's attitude was "one or the other." Certain television and radio programs often included a representative from the ASBC, the insurance industry and a pro-air bag consumer group in discussions intended to give the appearance of disagreement between the fractions. This led to considerable conflict and misunderstanding before testing and real-world experience demonstrated that seat belts and air bags were both required for best protection to the driving public. Several ASBC members were early developers of air bags and manufacturers of both air bags and belts; notably, TRW, Takata, Allied Signal and Morton (later Autoliv). The schism was healed in 1988 when the American Seat Belt Council changed its name to the "Automotive Occupants Restraint Council" (AORC) and expanded its mission to include all forms of automotive occupant restraints. Thereafter, many manufactures of air bag systems and components joined the Council, adding greatly to its standing and representation. From 1988 forward, these companies have been an energizing force in the Council and the industry.