9 in 10 pregnant people cannot wear a seatbelt correctly, UBC study finds

A new UBC study found nearly nine in 10 pregnant participants could not achieve the recommended seatbelt position.

A new study out of the University of British Columbia has found that almost nine out of 10 pregnant drivers and passengers cannot wear a seatbelt as recommended, highlighting the need for new safety equipment designs with different anatomies in mind.

The School of Biomedical Engineering study’s 333 pregnant participants, with a wide range of weeks along and body types, were given instructions and hands-on guidance to place the seatbelt in the recommended position, but only 11.4 per cent were able to achieve it, according to researchers.

Related: New UBC engineering course addresses gender gaps in safety equipment

Safety regulators say the lap belt should sit snugly below the abdomen across a person’s hips and pelvis, and the shoulder belt should sit between the occupant’s breasts. According to a UBC media release, most participants could position the lap belt correctly, but few could keep the shoulder belt between their breasts, and as pregnancy progresses the shoulder belt gets pushed off the centre of the chest.

It says the lap belt also often became folded into the soft tissue beneath participants’ abdomens instead of lying flat.

Dr. Peter Cripton, the study’s lead researcher, says the findings will help develop computer models of pregnant car passengers that can be studied to inform future designs.

“The next phase of this research is to build a human body, a pregnant computational human body model,” he told CTV News.

Each participant was 3D laser scanned and UBC is working with the University of Waterloo to create the model.

“I think we’re still very far away from being able to create better seatbelts. I think right now the priority is to get the anthropometry that we need to build better crash test dummies, so that we can then test different designs,” Vivian Chung, a research engineer who worked on the study, told CTV News.

“We basically highlighted that there is more to be done in terms of how we frame the public guidelines, perhaps in a way that’s easier to understand and easier to apply for pregnant women. But the design work, there’s definitely room for improvement, but we’re still very far.”

The researchers emphasized that pregnant people should still always wear seatbelts despite the study’s findings.

“Although there’s room for improvement right now, that we’ve highlighted through the research, the number one way to protect the mother and the unborn child is still with doing your seatbelt and adjusting it to your body,” Chung said.

With files from CTV News Vancouver’s Spencer Harwood