Proactive Use of Highway Recorded Data via an Event Data Recorder (EDR) to Achieve Nationwide Seat Belt Usage in the 90th Percentile by 2002

Automobiles have been in existence for over a hundred years (1898-1999). Today, we have over two hundred and fourteen million in America alone, and six hundred and ninety million worldwide. Nationwide, forty-seven million vehicles are continually in-motion during daytime usage. Within twenty years these numbers are expected to double. Last year, twenty-four million vehicles were involved in a crash or accident. Over 40,000 people died (115 daily) and the total economic cost is estimated at $150 billion annually. (Blincoe 1996) The personal, social, and economic costs of motor vehicle crashes include pain and suffering; direct costs sustained by the injured persons and their insurers; indirect costs to taxpayers for health care and public assistance; and for many victims, a lower standard of living and quality of life. During the past two decades, motor vehicles accounted for over 90 percent of all transportation fatalities, and an even larger percentage of accidents and injuries. Our increasingly mobile society exposes all age groups to the risks of crashes, as passengers, as drivers, and as pedestrians. The automobile is essential for the style of life we demand, and yet, motor vehicle crashes remain a major public health problem. In contemporary society automobiles play an indispensable role in transporting people and goods, and yet, the health care cost of motor vehicle crashes is a national financial burden that must and can be reduced. Worldwide, research and development is underway into systems that link highway infrastructure and telecommunications using emerging technologies via computers, electronics, and advanced sensing systems. While this paper will propose a highway safety counter-measure it will do so after reviewing the policy issues that created the current circumstances connected with occupant safety. Without this review it be impossible to understand the simplicity of the proposed counter-measure. This paper will identify methods for expanding the use of recorded data on highways to improve transportation safety by providing something that has yet to be achieved in the history of the automobile—a simple transportation safety technology capable of reducing fatalities of comparable magnitude. Thus, the primary objective is to technically explain this highway safety countermeasure, designated Seat Belt Event Data Recorder (SB-EDR). A device combining occupant sensing technologies to encourage and monitor seat belt usage within an Event Data Recorder (EDR) is what is required to produce a large change in United States and worldwide auto fatalities. Such a device would do so by achieving something that has eluded motorists to date-- the widespread use of seat belts twenty-four hours a day.

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Media Type: Web
  • Features: References;
  • Pagination: pp 173-198
  • Monograph Title: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Transportation Recorders. Transportation Recording: 2000 and Beyond, May 3-5, 1999, Arlington, Virginia

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01088103
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Files: TRIS
  • Created Date: Jan 30 2008 12:31PM