Consumers who have a vehicle with the Takata front seat belts affected by the voluntary recall are asked by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to do the following:

Check your seat belts by latching and unlatching them 10 times, making sure they do not stick, fail to latch or fail to unlatch.

Latch the belt, then apply pressure on it to make sure the belt does not unlatch.

If you have some difficulty with the belt, contact your dealer promptly for an appointment.

If there appears to be no problem, you should receive a notice in the mail to bring the car in for an appointment as soon as four months.

The car companies need the lead time to stock the parts.

Some companies have expressed concern about a bottleneck if customers try to make appointments to fix the belts all at once, so they are staggering the appointments and encouraging customers to call again.

For further information about the safety recall, the NHTSA hotline is (800) 424-9393.