The new multi-adaptive safety belt from Volvo is a redesign of the three-point seat belt in all of today’s cars which brings smarter technology that adapts to the person it is protecting and the type of crash the car is involved in.

For the new belt Volvo has upgraded the load-limiter with more settings, including an increased number of load-limiting profiles, up from three to 11.

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The new safety belt uses data from the car’s various sensors, allowing it to select the correct level of tensioning depending on things like the passenger’s body posture, and the car’s direction and speed.

As an example, Volvo says the system can select the highest load setting for a large person involved in a severe crash in order to reduce the chance of head injury. However, it will choose a milder setting for a smaller person in a less severe accident to minimise the risk of fractured ribs.

Calibration for the system was done using data from the automaker’s database of 80,000 people involved in real-world crashes over the past 50-plus years.

The multi-adaptive seat belt system can be updated via over-the-air updates as more data comes in, and Volvo’s engineers fine-tune the settings, although the automaker doesn’t say how often it expects updates to roll out.