Three types of driver educational strategies were tested to determine the most effective approach for motivating drivers to adjust their head restraints to the correct vertical position: (1) a human interactive personal contact with a member of an Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (Canada) trained head restraint adjustment team; (2) a passive video presentation of the consequences of correct and incorrect head restraint adjustment; and (3) an interactive three-dimensional kinetic model showing the consequences of correct and incorrect head restraint adjustment. An experimental pretest-posttest control group design was used. A different educational treatment was used in each of three lanes of three lanes of a vehicle emissions testing facility, with a fourth lane with no intervention serving as a control group. The human intervention led to significantly more drivers actually adjusting their head restraints than the passive video or interactive kinetic model approaches which were both no different from the control group. The human intervention was recommended as the most effective and has been implemented successfully on a limited basis during three months of 1995.
Abstract