Retrofit Seatbelts in Motorcoaches

Funding Source: UTC

Title: An Innovative Design to Retrofit Seatbelts in Motorcoaches

Date:

Status: Current

Summary: PI Krishnamurty and his team will further explore and extend the design of retrofit seatbelts as restraint systems for children riding in school buses. As part of this extended work, the team will consider a holistic design approach focusing on safety, affordability, adaptability, usability, flexibility, capacity, ease of universal installation, various crash scenarios, additional benefits opportunities, impact on driver distraction, benefits of improved passengers’ behavior, ease of use, limitation of obstructions, and compartmentalization. This work will investigate these numerous criteria to evaluate metrics by which the effectiveness of each should be evaluated. Various studies and research will derive the level of understanding required. With such a large number of criteria, preference modeling techniques will be developed to accommodate the wide array for consistent comparison of design alternatives. Design innovation techniques will be developed and deployed to generate an ample supply of valid design concepts to consider in this set of design alternatives to compare. Since a design process is iterative, evaluation of various solutions will drive various studies to stimulate innovation toward progressively better solutions.

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