UTC 2022 Funding - Cycle 3 Research Projects

Project No.: CY3-UARK-01
Title: Automating Statewide Seat Belt Monitoring 
Performing Institution: University of Arkansas
Principal Investigator: Sarah Hernandez, University of Arkansas
Start and Anticipated Completion Dates: 01/01/2026 to 01/15/2027 
Abstract: Despite some recent improvements, seat belt usage in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana remains below the national average of 91.9%. These relatively low usage rates position three of the SPTC region states among the states with the lowest seat belt compliance, highlighting the need for enhanced safety initiatives and monitoring methods. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) requires annual statewide surveys of seat belt use to be eligible for federal funding for highway safety programs, funds that are used for traffic safety campaigns and enforcement programs.   

This project aims to enhance traffic safety programs aimed at education and enforcement of seat belt use. This project will automate statewide seat belt monitoring using Connected Vehicle (CV) and crash report data. CV and crash report data have the potential to reduce data collection burdens for seat belt use monitoring which is used for enforcement and education programs. The project tasks are to (1) implement a full-scale survey of seat belt engagement chain of event processes, and (2) develop mathematical models to estimate the relationship between observational seat belt use and belt use reported by crash reports. Replacing manual observations that are currently used to collect statewide seatbelt use data with continuous CV event and/or crash report data will enable more temporally and spatially continuous observations of seat belt usage. 

This project builds on SPTC Cycle 2 work which established a pilot project to evaluate seat belt engagement chain of events through naturalistic driving study and developed an exploratory model of observed seat belt use and seat belt use reported in crash records using historical data. The pilot project established survey protocols, equipment specifications for dashboard cameras, collected data for a small number of participants (<15 samples), and established a numerical relationship between observed and crash reported belt use.  The proposed work will expand the sample size for both the naturalistic driving experiments and modeling efforts. Cycle 2 outcomes directly support this next step, allowing the project to move from exploratory analysis toward a more operational modeling framework. 
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