I just noticed something odd today. I always hook the seatbelt before starting the car but was curious as to what would happen if I started up without the seatbelt latched. Turned out that absolutely nothing was different. I thought that at least the seatbelt warning light would stay on and that there would be all sorts of warning chimes. In fact in my wife's car if you unhook the seatbelt when the car is moving at all you get all sorts of chimes and announcements and I figured that would be the case for the Jaguar.

So I tried a couple of other things--driving without latching the seatbelt at all and driving with the seatbelt latched but then unlatching it while I was driving--in either case NO lights or chimes.

I was wondering if this was normal behavior so I looked in the manual and it stated that the seatbelt warning light would stay on for 6 seconds or so if you start the car and do not have it latched. So is that it?

Doug

 

That's the way my car acts - so did my 03.

Mike

 

Yelp my 03 is the same. These were built before the lawyers got involed in car safety

 

It doesn't bother me in the least but I just wanted to make sure that there were not supposed to be any warning lights or chimes since, if so, this could indicate some other problem with wiring or the control module. I seemed to think that even in my older cars there would be a seat belt unfastened light that would turn on if you disconnected the seat belt.

If anyone else checks this out chime in (pun intended) with your findings.

Doug

 

What are seat belts???......Mike

 

Same here, and thank God. I always stop to get the mail and then drive the 300 ft to my house. Thankfully the Jag lets me do so in peace.

I once had a VW that would ding and blink and carry on when I did this. Ended up buying a VAGCOM to turn that sh*t off.

 

My 2001 and 2005 UK spec XK8's were the same.

The later model XK has an insistent 'bing - bing - bing ......' sound in these circumstances but it can be turned off by the owner. The warning light cannot be disabled.

Graham

 

My 99 is the same, start, warning light, ding ding ding, then off. It's almost like the Jag engineers decided they didn't need to program it further. Kinda like the thought was "Oh, you got in an accident without wearing your seat belt? Didn't you hear the chimes and see the warning light? Well, we warned you"...

 

It kind of makes me wonder why there is a seat belt warning light at all. What does it take to actually trigger the light to go on?

Doug

 

A Hall Effect sensor in the belt buckle detects when the seatbelt is correctly inserted.

Presumably the warning light is triggered when the transmission is moved out of Park without the seatbelt inserted and the sensor is in open circuit ........

Graham

 

I thought maybe they trusted us to buckle up or not. My Honda Ridgeline drove me nuts with chimes until I opened up the dash and found the beeper on the instrument circuit board and snapped it off

 

If we had all the liability lawyer train of thought before we had cars, we would not have cars, and as for aircraft.....!!!!!

 

Maybe a european thing not to have a continuous annoying beep. My brother in law Audi Q5 will beep 15-20 secs then stop, light on dash but he doesn't care.

(personally I always wear my SB)

 

In addition to the Hall effect sensor the light comes on if there is a fault in the system, blown fuse, etc.

It's just not a government nanny system to irritate the hell out of you until you buckle up.