Seat Belt Non-usage Warning System

Highway fatalities per 100 million vehicle-miles have declined from a high of 5.1 in 1960 to 1.5 in 1999. Increased use of seat belts undoubtedly is responsible for a significant portion of this decline. The goal of DOT¿s ¿Buckle Up America¿ campaign, initiated in 1997, is to increase the seat belt usage rate to 90 percent by 2005. However, current seat belt usage falls short of this goal. Our approach is to identify a technology-based solution to increase seat belt usage. We will accomplish this task by determining the optimum technical concept (i.e., hardware/software) from a selection of technical concepts by interacting with stakeholder groups for their opinions regarding each candidate concept based on a set of issues relevant to them. Responses from each stakeholder group will be integrated to achieve a global consensus for a candidate technology. Once this selection has been made, Foster-Miller will undertake a top-level engineering design in preparation for the development and evaluation of this design during Phase II.