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While putting my Insight back together, I had the occasion to study its SRS. The system has a single input: An accelerometer bolted to the frame of the car near the firewall, inside the SRS computer. At some number of g's of deceleration, it fires the seatbelt pretensioners. At some higher threshold, it fires the airbag inflators. It's an incredibly simple system.
The 2000 Civic SRS adds "impact sensors" in each front fender, and newer cars get insanely complex with more sensors and more bags.
For people who are inclined to add soft, pretensioning seatbelts to a homemade car, I believe you can do that very easily, by installing a junkyard SRS system minus the airbags. If you want to add airbags, that will add considerable risk and complexity, and you'll need a donor car with matching seating position, distance to the steering wheel, and roughly similar deceleration during a crash.
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