Early A shoulder belts?
For info on good options for upgraded seat belts, read
this post starting about halfway down where it says "Once you've got the car in good running condition…".
Your wife is right: these are unsafe cars. Always were, always will be. You can make it somewhat less abjectly dangerous with better seat belts, brakes, lights, etc, but many of such a car's safety hazards cannot be fixed. You cannot overcome the complete lack of any crashworthiness or post-crash survivability safety engineering in these cars—the solid steering column, the weak door latches, the lack of crush zones, side impact protection, fuel system impact protection, or any other basic crashworthiness engineering, design, or construction. The knowledge and technology did not exist. See
this with a lot of '60s Chrysler Corporation vehicles. Note how well the stronger, improved-for-1964 door latches work (not) to prevent the door flying open in a crash. I see a lot of very dead and very maimed people when I view that video. Take a look at
this graph of U.S. traffic fatalities over time: a whole lot fewer people dying lately despite a whole lot more people driving a whole lot more miles. The main driver of that trend is safer cars. (And that graph shows only
deaths—it does not show the enormous reduction in severe, debilitating, and disfiguring
injuries).
Lap belts. If that's not good enough(…)
"If"? See
here (2nd half by Chrysler)
