Sensor Network with Active Instructional Content to Prevent Child Safety Seat Misuse

Project Summary Abstract Minnesota HealthSolutionsMHSproposes to develop an innovative child safety seat user engagement system that aims to actively educateinstruct and alarm caregivers with the goal of preventing critical child safety seat misuses and injuries to children riding in motor vehiclesKey enabling technologies make the proposed system technically feasible at this timeMotor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of unintentional morbidity and mortality in American childrenIn the past ten yearsthousands of children have died in unintentional crashes and millions more had hospital treated injuriesProperly utilized child safety seats are the most effective way to protect young children involved in crashes from serious injury or death and the vast majority of children are seated in child safety seatsHoweverseveral large studies have observed that onlytoof children are correctly harnessed into correctly installed seatsImproper use of child restraints substantially reduces their effectiveness and is a major public health concernBetter systems are needed to improve the rate of proper child safety seat useWe hypothesize that the proposed child safety seat user engagement system will significantly improve the rate of proper child safety seat usage and reduce vehicle crash related child injuries and deathsAn interdisciplinary team of researchers has been assembled to definebuildand evaluate feasibilityand productionprototype systems in phase I and phase IIrespectivelyThe phase II production prototype development will be completed in a rigorous quality controlled design and testing process to ensure a safe and effective product is produced Project Narrative The population of interest for this device is virtually all child safety seat installers userswhich includes parentsgrandparentsand child care providersThe available market for the proposed device exceedsmillion units annually in the U SaloneThere are approximatelymillion childrenyears old and younger in the U SBy lawchildren in this age group must be restrained in a child safety seatThe proposed engagement instructional warning technology can provide benefit in nearly all of these seat installations