COMPARISON OF THE COMFORT AND CONVENIENCE OF AUTOMATIC SAFETY BELT SYSTEMS AMONG SELECTED 1988-1989 MODEL YEAR AUTOMOBILES
A nonrandom sample of 120 disproportionately short, tall, and overweight drivers compared the comfort and convenience of the automatic safety belt systems used in seventeen automobiles. Nine vehicles had motorized shoulder belts with manual lap belts; and three had non motorized shoulder belts only. The study was designed to identify problems of comfort and convenience in order to improve an already acceptable technological advance. The study compared comfort and convenience features among different automatic belt types and specific vehicle installations. This study did not evaluate comfort and convenience against an absolute standard or compare comfort and convenience with features of manual systems. The motorized system and the two point non-motorized system had the fewest or least severe problems. Some drivers found comfort and convenience problems with each belt system tested. Women, short drivers, and overweight drivers all had more problems than drivers who were male, or average height or tall and not overweight.
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- Record URL:
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Corporate Authors:
ABT Associates, Incorporated
55 Wheeler Street
Cambridge, MA United States 02138 -
Authors:
- Finn, P
- Beauregard, M
- Macek, S
- Rodriguez, A
- Publication Date: 1989-6
Media Info
- Pagination: 56 p.
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Comfort; Human factors engineering; Human factors engineering; Human subject testing; Manual safety belts; Safety equipment; Shoulder harnesses
- Uncontrolled Terms: Convenience
- Old TRIS Terms: Automatic safety equipment; Shoulder harness
- Subject Areas: Design; Highways; Safety and Human Factors; Vehicles and Equipment; I91: Vehicle Design and Safety;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 00494114
- Record Type: Publication
- Source Agency: National Technical Information Service
- Report/Paper Numbers: HS-807 467
- Files: HSL, NTL, TRIS
- Created Date: Apr 30 1990 12:00AM