Today I had to slam on my brakes from about 30 mph, the collision pre-tensioner feature kicks on and tightened the seatbelt. This has happened before when road work construction accidentally sets off the safety feature but in those prior situations the seatbelt tightening relaxes to normal soon after. However today the tightening did not release making it very uncomfortable so while driving I released the latch of the seatbelt only to have it tighten itself back without allowing me to pull the belt back at all. I attempted to pull on it to release but it has pulled itself tight now, not allowing any slack. Is there a way to somehow reset this safety mechanism to allow me to use my seatbelt again? Thanks for any advice. 2012 Prius V 5
UPDATE: After letting it sit for a few hours, the situation was the same. So I headed on down the road with the seatbelt beeping going on. Out of frustration I reach down toward the bottom anchor of the seatbelt and pulled as hard as I could and it slowly allowed me to pull it out of the reel/spool. Thank God. I will just leave this here in case it can help someone else.
Seems the inertial reel jammed, possibly due to corrosion. They don’t see much use unless you’re in the practice of doing panic stops, or tracking the car. May want to take off the trims and inspect both driver and passenger sides.
Assuming the 2012 v is like the gen 3 liftback, the seat belt retractors have two things built in: an inertial lock that doesn't pull back the seat belt, only stops it unspooling farther, and a pretensioner that actually pulls it back. The pretensioner is pyrotechnic, single-use-only. It's a small bomb that drives a piston to wind the spool in. You might not really have had the pretensioner go off, as it's just meant for conditions as severe as a collision. If it went off you'll have an airbag light on the dash and the belt retractor has to be replaced. There may also be signs of heat damage to the plastic trim nearby. It seems more likely something just jammed up, as Air_Boss suggests.
