Occupant Pseudo Buckling Detection Method in Passenger Vehicles

Seatbelt along with airbag plays a vital role in protecting the lives of occupants in vehicle during a crash. Seat Belt Reminder (SBR) is an audio-visual indicator which alerts the occupant with a lamp on the cluster as well as an audio chime to fasten their seatbelt. To avoid the chime, Occupant often attempt to do pseudo buckling in different ways as buckling the seatbelt behind the occupant or by wrapping the seatbelt at back side of the seat. The current system is not capable of detecting it as the SBR is driven by seatbelt buckle status. To overcome the above limitation, this paper presents a technique which detects pseudo buckling. The proposal in this paper is to enhance the existing system by including magnets and a reed switch. Here the magnet is attached to the seatbelt and a reed switch is placed inside the seatback. The reed switch detects the presence of magnetic field thereby closing/opening the circuit. If the occupant has pseudo buckled, the magnets in the seatbelt will be closer to the reed switch and triggers the warning.