Amazon moves to take down seatbelt alarm blockers [UPDATE]

Update:

Amazon is in the process of removing U.S. and UK marketplace listings of products that disable car seatbelt alarms, the e-commerce giant said on Friday, a day after the company did the same in India.

"We are in the process of removing the products in question that may have missed our controls," a company spokesperson said.

Previous opinion piece, filed Thursday, appears below:

There was an obscure (in the U.S., at least) bit of car news this week out of India that raised new questions about the kinds of products Amazon stocks.

An Indian business tycoon named Cyrus Mistry died in a crash last weekend near Mumbai. Mistry, 54, was the former chairman of Tata Sons, the massive conglomerate that among other things owns Jaguar-Land Rover. Reports about the crash said Mistry wasn't wearing his seatbelt, a circumstance that Reuters said was "reigniting the road safety debate in the world's fourth-largest car market."

Vehicle accidents killed more than 150,000 people in India in 2021. The World Bank said last year that India had a death on its roads every four minutes.

As part of the debate, India's Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari this week called on Amazon.com to remove from its website listings for metal seatbelt-silencing clips. These clips are inserted in seatbelt slots to silence the alarm that typically keeps pinging when seatbelts are not in use. Presumably because Gadkari raised the issue, these devices must be popular over there, though it's unclear whether Mistry or others in his car were using them. Amazon's India site on Wednesday had several listings for these clips, priced as low as about $3.

Amazon responded on Thursday by removing the clips from its Indian marketplace listings. A search on the platform seemed to confirm the products had been pulled, and Amazon in a statement to Reuters said it takes strict action against sellers who violate Indian laws, "including listing of unsafe or non-compliant products."

"The products in question are no longer available," Amazon said.

Well that's great. Great for India at least. It so happens that Amazon also sells these items on its U.S. site. They're easy to find. We're not going to tell you exactly what to search for, or provide you links, but if you really want such a thing, they're there.