OBJECTIVES Motor vehicle injury is the leading cause of injury death for children 4 to 8 years of age. Although booster seat use in this age group substantially reduces the risk of injury, most children are currently restrained by seatbelts designed for adults. The objective of this study was to measure booster seat use directly, determine factors predictive of proper child restraint, and asses...

Car transfers and wheelchair (WC) loading are crucial for independent community participation in persons with complete paraplegia from spinal cord injury, but are complex, physically demanding, and known to provoke shoulder pain. This study aimed to describe techniques and factors influencing car transfer and WC loading for individuals with paraplegia driving their own vehicles and using their ...

Despite the fact that safety organisations recommend that children travel in the rear seat, many children under 12 years in Australia occupy the front seats of cars when they travel. While there has been some research investigating situational factors that influence where children sit, little has been reported on the psychosocial influences on parents’ decisions about children’s seating positio...

Despite the existence of laws in all 50 states requiring the use of car safety seats or child restraint devices for young children, more children are still killed as passengers in car crashes than from any other type of injury. Pediatricians and other health care professionals need to provide up-to-date, appropriate information for parents regarding car safety seat choices and proper use. Altho...

Burns in young infants have long been recognized as a potential cause of nonaccidental injury. Accidental exposure to hot car seat parts resulting in significant burn injury is an unusual mimicker of child abuse. A case involving an 11-month-old child who presented with a significant contact burn injury related to the noncovered, heated, plastic part of a car seat, is described. The present cas...

In this paper, for the purpose of improving the ride comfort of a passenger car, the use of an air-cell on top of the conventional polyurethane foam seat is proposed. The air-cell can be modeled as a variable spring with the change of its internal air pressure. Therefore, for different human sizes and road disturbances, the adjustment of the air-cell can make the optimal contact pressure betwee...

Previous studies have shown that the correct use of car safety seats can protect infants and children from vehicular injury. Although child passenger devices are increasingly used in the US, motor vehicle crashes continue to be the leading cause of death and acquired disability in infants and children younger than 14 years of age. These events are likely related, at least in part, to the high p...

Of 2,275 cases of non-fatal injuries sustained by all categories of road users 185 were inflicted on back seat passengers. Twenty-six such passengers sustained severe and 66 moderately severe injuries. Only two patients (aged 18 months and 3 years) wore any form of restraint. Back seat passengers may be injured by impact with the rear of the front seat or other objects in the rear compartment; ...

When researching interactive systems in the car, the design space can be divided into the following areas: driver, front seat passenger and rear seat. The latter has so far not been sufficiently addressed in HCI research, which results in an absence of implications for interaction designs in that space. This work presents a cultural probing study investigating the activities and the technology ...

Although traffic safety is continuously improving, transportation still causes considerable personal and property damage. The majority of accidents happen because of human error. Monitoring the driver’s condition can be a means to reduce such events. Daimler AG is already working towards this subject, e.g. in the BMBF (German Ministry for Education and Research) funded project INSITEX (Aktive I...