INDUSTRY PEOPLE
Don Wilkinson arriving on Norfolk Island in his son’s Vans RV8 Home-Built plane on their intrepid trans-Tasman route.
Don normally fly his wee Corby Starlet ZK-TOY but it’s a bit small for this big leap.
“Gone are the days where people go willy-nilly around the
place. There’s been a few big incidents where people have
been badly injured. We do try to educate people and give
them a basic understanding of the law.
“Ideally the Health and Safety Act gets on top of seatbelt
use out in industry and on farms, which are considered
workplaces.
“We find people are a little resentful of having to change what
they’re doing especially if they’ve had a good track record
of safety, for example, farmers who don’t like wearing their
seatbelts out in the paddocks burning around, but when you
look at things, they do have a lot of accidents on quad bikes
so their mindset does need to be changed as well.”
mandatory to replace with one of our products, it just seems
to work for them,” explains Mike.
Individual clients approach the team to have specialist
belts ordered in for their beloved classic cars. Belts can
be bought in almost any colour, for the owner who wants
everything to match. This side of the business is of great
interest to both Mike and Eddie who are keen car nuts.
Each has a build underway; Mike has a Lotus 7 replica,
with a fairly powerful engine in it, and an open top. Eddie
has a Sylva Striker, a kit-car based on a Lotus chassis, but
with a fibreglass body.
What sets Seatbelt Sales apart from other distributors, is
experience, Eddie explains.
How we do that isn’t through fines, according to road safety
campaigners. The punitive approach has not resulted in a
reduction of either road or workplace fatalities due to lax
seatbelt use. “We deal with industrial forklifts, retractable lapbelts. And we
have people walk in off the street who have failed a WoF.
The majority of that side of the business is through garages
and workshops.
On the bright side though, belts are now available for a
greater variety of heavy vehicles than they used to be, one
such example is for airport luggage trolley drivers. Slowly,
the message is filtering through that any moving vehicle (and
there are exemptions available) should be fitted with a seat
safety device. “There is a big difference between the seatbelts, they are
all quite unique. We get a lot of people thinking the same
product fits everything, and then they also only want to pay
only $50!”
For Seatbelt Sales, their bigger clients are Fulton Hogan and
Komatsu.
“Fulton Hogan are making one of their own belts basically
84
CAM October 2018
Certainly the landscape for safety belts has changed
dramatically since the 1970s. The Springbelt looks to be
leading the way in industrial safety.
“There really isn’t anything like the springbelt,” Mike
concludes.
w w w. c a m m a g a z i n e . c o . n z