Increasing seat belt use is one of the most effective and least costly ways of reducing the lives lost and injuries incurred on the nation's highways each year, yet about one in four drivers and front-seat passengers continues to ride unbuckled. The Transportation Research Board, in response to a congressional request for a study to examine the potential of in-vehicle technologies to increase belt use, formed a panel of 12 experts having expertise in the areas of automotive engineering, design, and regulation; traffic safety and injury prevention; human factors; survey research methods; economics; and technology education and consumer interest. This panel, named the Committee for the Safety Belt Technology Study, examined the potential benefits of technologies designed to increase belt use, determined how drivers view the acceptability of the technologies, and considered whether legislative or regulatory actions are necessary to enable their installation on passenger vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the study sponsor, funded and conducted interviews and focus groups of samples of different belt user groups to learn more about the potential effectiveness and acceptability of technologies ranging from seat belt reminder systems to more aggressive interlock systems, and provided the information collected to the study committee. The committee also supplemented its expertise by holding its second meeting in Dearborn, Michigan, where it met in proprietary sessions with several of the major automobile manufacturers, a key supplier, and a small business inventor of a shifter interlock system to learn of planned new seat belt use technologies as well as about company data concerning their effectiveness and acceptability. The committee's findings and recommendations are presented in this five-chapter report. Chapter 1 provides an introduction. In Chapter 2, an overview is provided of what is known about the target group for seat belt technologies--belt nonusers--including key factors that affect belt use. Implications for current technology introduction are described. In Chapter 3, the history of the 1970s experience with belt reminder and interlock systems, as well as other key approaches for increasing belt use, are reviewed with an eye to what lessons can be brought forward to today. Chapter 4 is focused on current information concerning the potential effectiveness and acceptability of recently introduced seat belt use technologies. The results of the literature review, manufacturer briefings, and NHTSA interviews and focus groups are summarized, and the implications for the introduction of belt use technologies are discussed. In Chapter 5, NHTSA's interpretation of the current statutory and regulatory prohibitions concerning the introduction of new seat belt use technologies is reviewed, and manufacturers' concerns are explored. The committee then provides its findings and recommendations concerning the role of technology in increasing belt use. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting