Cars of the future may have cutting-edge seat-belt technology
- US' apex road safety agency NHTSA has proposed making alerts for rear occupant seatbelts mandatory in all future cars.
It is said that seatbelts are the first line of defence for vehicle occupants when it comes to facing a mishap while driving or riding a car. Road safety and vehicular safety have been increasingly finding the introduction of new technologies and regulations over the last few years around the world. The US is one of the major countries with the largest vehicular population and a large number of road accidents registered in the country every year.
In order to mitigate the injuries and prevent fatalities of car occupants, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has proposed seat belt warning systems to be mandatory in all vehicles including passenger cars trucks, most buses and multipurpose passenger vehicles with a gross weight of 4,535 kg.
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The proposed rule from the apex US road safety agency seeks to expand upon the existing seatbelt warning system by requiring visual and audible alerts for the driver's seat and other occupants including the front passenger and rear occupants. Interestingly, this proposal from NHTSA comes after the Indian government made the rear occupant seatbelt fastening mandatory in the country. With the new rule proposed by NHTSA, future cars will emit a visual alert on the instrument cluster and sound along with that until all the occupants in a car fasten their seatbelts.
This would come as a major step in the automotive safety regulations and in the vehicular safety technology segment. Seatbelts have a proven track record of reduction of injuries in case of mishaps. The NHTSA estimates that the proposed technology could prevent approximately 300 non-fatal injuries and more than 100 fatalities annually.
Interestingly, this proposal also shows that despite the significant progress in seatbelt usage and increased safety because of that, there is still room for improvement, especially in the rear-seat occupant, where people usually don't wear seatbelts. An audio-visual alert would bring wearing seatbelts for the rear occupants more into practice.
