Report: Rate of Seat Belt Inspections Increasing

July 16, 2021—Body shops are increasingly billing, and being paid for, seat belt inspections, according to a press release.

In Crash Network’s latest, “Who Pays for What?” survey, 62 percent of shops reporting they have charged for the labor to inspect seat belts, compared to just 37 percent in 2016. 

Among those shops, about one in every three (34 percent, up from 24 percent in 2016) say they are paid for that procedure “always” or “most of the time,” and nearly an equal percentage say they are paid at least “some of the time.”

“Every OEM has a very specific procedure for how to inspect seatbelts,” Collision Advice’s Mike Anderson said in a statement. “No matter whether you charge for it or not, we have an obligation to make sure that we’re fixing vehicles safely and properly, and that means following the OEM repair procedures when it comes to seatbelts.”