Survey of Front Passenger Posture Usage in Passenger Vehicles

In 2002, NHTSA statistics indicate air bag deployments saved an estimated 1,500 lives; however, reports of occupants having serious or fatal injuries during air bag deployment appear low relative to the number of accidents with air bag deployments. To avoid air bag induced injuries, a variety of occupant sensing technologies are being developed. One of the critical logic deployment challenges faced by these technologies is whether the system can accurately determine if the occupant is in a posture or a position such that air bag deployment may result in an injury. To improve accuracy, it is necessary to understand what postures the occupants are likely to assume during a ride and how often. For this purpose, Delphi Corporation has conducted a survey to solicit opinions on the posture usage rate. With 560 responses, the frequencies for 29 sitting postures for adult passengers and 13 child postures or positions were estimated. As a validation, an observation study was also conducted using video recording of front passenger postures. Although only limited postures can be observed, the result shows a consistent trend with the questionnaire survey. As a preliminary study, this paper intends to provide information that helps to understand how front passengers sit during their normal daily trip. Hopefully, this information will inspire further large scale investigation in this area.