• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.53-73
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• 2023

Although it is mandatory to wear a seat belt that can minimize human injury when traffic accident occurs, the number of traffic accident casualties not wearing seat belts still accounts for a significant proportion.The seat belt wearing detection system for all seats is a system that identifies whether all seat passengers wear a seat belt and encourages their usage, also it can be a useful technical countermeasure. Firstly, this study established the viability of system implementation by assessing the factors influencing the severity of injuries in traffic accidents through the development of an ordered probit model. Analysis results showed that the use of seat belts has statistically significant effects on the severity of traffic accidents, reducing the probability of death or serious injury by 0.054 times in the event of a traffic accident. Secondly, a meta-analysis was conducted based on prior research related to seat belts and injuries in traffic accidents to estimate the expected reduction in accident severity upon the implementation of the system.The analysis of the effect of accident severity reduction revealed that wearing seat belts would lead to a 63.3% decrease in fatal accidents, with the front seats showing a reduction of 75.7% and the rear seats showing a reduction of 58.1% in fatal accidents. Lastly, Using the results of the meta-analysis and traffic accident statistics, the expected decrease in the number of traffic accident casualties with the implementation of the system was derived to analyze the traffic safety effects of the proposed detection system. The analysis demonstrated that with an increase in the adoption rate of the system, the number of casualties in accidents where seat belts were not worn decreased. Specifically, at a system adoption rate of 60%, it is anticipated that the number of fatalities would decrease by more than three times compared to the current scenario. Based on the analysis results, operational strategies for the system were proposed to increase seat belt usage rates and reduce accident severity.