Motivating Drivers to Correctly Adjust Head Restraints

This program uses a face-to-face intervention to motivate drivers to correctly adjust their head restraints to reduce back and neck injuries. Research has shown that if all adjustable head restraints were adjusted to the proper height there would be a 28.3% reduction in whiplash injuries occurring in rear-end collisions. Through the program, traffic safety personnel educate patrons of the AirCare Centre, a vehicle emission testing facility. Drivers are given a card illustrating the correct positioning of headrests, warned about the dangers of improper positioning, and encouraged to adjust their head rest to the proper position. The face-to-face interaction with employees encourages drivers with incorrectly positioned head rests to make adjustments.

The goal of this program is to raise awareness of the proper position of car head rests, and to encourage drivers to adjust their head rest to the appropriate height.

This intervention was compared to a passive video presentation of the consequences of correct and incorrect head restraint, an interactive three-dimensional kinetic model showing the consequences of correct and incorrect head restraint, and a control group. The face-to-face intervention led to significantly more drivers adjusting their head restraints (28%) immediately after the intervention than the video presentation (13%), the kinetic model (11%) or the control group (12%).