Occupant Pseudo Buckling Detection Method In Passenger Vehicles

Seatbelts are solely designed for protecting the occupants from gruesome accidents, seatbelts along with Airbags play a vital role in protecting the lives of occupants during a crash scenario. Seat Belt Reminder (SBR) is an audio-visual indicator on the car dashboard which alerts the occupant to buckle the seatbelt. According to Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, Government of India[1], the number of deaths associated with occupants not wearing seat belts was 24,435 and accounted for 16.1 per cent of total road accident deaths in the country, involving 9,349 drivers and 15,086 passengers. This research is primarily relied on buckle status and thus were unable to detect if the occupant had pseudo buckled i.e., wrapping the seatbelt across the seat rather than over the occupant to avoid SBR. This paper proposes a new method which discourages the occupant from pseudo buckling. It consists of a magnet and a reed switch system, where the magnet is embedded in the seatbelt and the reed switch is placed in the seatback respectively. The reed switch detects the presence of magnetic field thereby closing/opening the circuit. If the occupant has pseudo buckled, then the reed switch closes the circuit and alerts the SBR as specified in Table 1. Table 1: SBR Output Seatbelt Status Reed Switch Status SBR Output UNBUCKLED X (Don’t Care) ON BUCKLED OPEN OFF BUCKLED CLOSED ON (Pseudo buckle detected) This method is an addition to the existing SBR system which alarms if there is a pseudo buckling scenarios, and aids in deployment of airbags during vehicle impact. Reference 1. https://morth.nic.in/sites/default/files/Road_Accidednt.pdf