I want to tell the Acura designers that the rear center lap/shoulder belt should buckle on the left for left-drive markets. It's just such a pain to reach over my booster-seated child and buckle it from the driver's side. Walking around to the other side stinks. It's on the left in our Volvo, and it's super easy that way.

My thought is that they just didn't make that change from the Japanese/UK version.

Where would I send such a thought to give me the best audience and lowest chance of being ignored?

 

Well, email the customer service, tell your salesman, and maybe Colin on here can help you as well!

 

I hate it when people have their left rear door open all the way while they're reaching in trying to do something....I'll be going like 40-45 miles, and i'll have to move over into the other lane slightly so that i can barely clear their door (i'll slow down only if i think they're about to jump back into traffic or something)

If I'm understanding you correctly, then I think they should keep the design. It'll encourage people to use the passenger side...and if they choose to do it from the driver's side, they'll have to climb in a little bit...

just my 2 cents...

I have a couple of ideas myself...but I can only remember them while I'm in my TSX lol

 

It's probably a subtle way of the TSX telling you it's safer for the child to be placed in the rear passenger or driver's side seat, not in the center.

 

this is why the old minivans only had an entrance from one side back in the day. passenger side only. safer to load/unload kids from that side. pretty logical. wonder if that's why they did it in the TSX.

 

How often do people need to buckle their child seats in while pulled over on the highway?

 

Well, that would be false, or at least debatable. There is gov't literature out there saying the center is the safest, though I've read other places that passenger side is safer.

It doesn't matter anyway. I have three kids back there. Infant on passenger side, 2-year-old on driver side, 4-year-old in the center.

I do remember times when we actually had to choose where to put our child in the back

 

future design requests go to acurafuturedesign@acura.com

 

Shouldn't you be making sure your kids are properly buckled in before you climb into the drivers seat?

 

Who said anything about a highway?

I'm sure they thought about it when they designed it and built it that way so people use the passenger side, but it doesn't hurtt o request to have it built differently.

Could you maybe just put it on your mod list and document your work for us?

 

Well where else would people be pulled over and in your way while buckling their child seats into the car?

Honestly, I highly doubt they thought about that at all -- the seatbelts are mostly used for people to buckle themselves in, and it doesn't really matter that much on a center seat.

 

he probably means the lane for opposing traffic. i've had to do this many times.

 

they thought about it with mini vans, why not with cars?

 

How many vans does Acura produce? That is probably why they have never had to think about it. I doubt that it's a need for the majority of Acura drivers.

 

How about any street in the US where people park (and drive) on the right side of the street. Doesn't it make sense to stand on the side walk (Normally right side of car in US) and load everything instead of standing on the drivers side with your door wide open while people drive by?

Why don't we have one of our right side drivers chime in and tell us how it's set up on their car. That will pretty much sum it up for us. I bet it's backwards since they would load the car frm the other side.

 

I am. I said driver's "side" not "seat." I'm leaning in the rear driver's side door.

 

The issue is not the brand, but that it's made in Japan, and they just didn't convert that feature to left-drive.

Here's an image of the interior of the TL of Acura's current site. The center belt is on the right and buckles on the driver's side. This is because the TL is made in the US.

 

Both left and right drive are made in JP, and that feature is not converted to left-drive. Here's the Japanese Euro R interior shot:

From: http://www.honda.co.jp/democar/accord/sedan/euro-r.html

 

It's cracking me up how many people are convinced that every piece of this car is so purposefully designed with intention behind every spec.



It's just a car company. It's a really good car company, but it's not like it's run by SkyNET or something.

 

Exactly. That's how all of the streets are here...everyone parks on the street, and the lanes aren't wide enough to accomodate people who have their driver's doors open.

In Las Vegas, all the streets are wide, and no one parks on the street (we have a condo there, so we go often and go all around)

When they were designing the car, they had to plan where everything should go. They just don't slap parts here and there and call it a car ;-) In the engineering world, we have to see how things interact and minimize any possibility of problems. I'm sure they don't build cars with the intent, "oh, we'll just recall XXX,000 cars and fix it later".

Who knows...maybe there's some law in effect that they have to abide by, or some sort of safety report that they have access to.

Maybe the TL's 60/40 cut is different than the TSX. Maybe the TL is marketed for the sort of people that won't be driving babies around. I know if I looked over my shoulder and saw the two seatbelts like that it'd drive me nuts...that TL picture is starting to make me woozy ;-P

Maybe it's a leftover design from coupes. In my accord, I make everyone enter from the passenger side...no one ever gets to move my driver's seat. So maybe they designed a coupe first, then decided to slap on an extra pair of doors to make a sedan? Take a look at the odyssey. In the middle row, the driver's side seat doesn't move. Only the passenger seat can slide left and right. The center rearseat has the seat belt on the person's left side (buckle is on the right). So if someone wants to get to the rear seat, they have to go from the passenger side (ie: not really intended for people to enter from the driver's side)

 

as i said before, minivans were designed for people to get in on the passenger side. the didn't always have a door on the driver side for this specific reason, and according to crap i read in the past, this was a safety consideration because primarliy, kids would be the ones getting in and out, and the passenger side is the side that's most commonly against the side walk or off the street.