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Vibrating seat belts that alert drivers to hazards ahead could help to more than halve the most common cause of accidents on Britain's roads, according to new research.
Many car manufacturers have already introduced multi-sensory devices such as audible parking sensors in a bid to improve safety while others are experimenting with tactile indicators to shake sleepy drivers awake.
The technique was pioneered in jet fighters, many of which already include vibrating seats to warn pilots of an impending emergency.
Professor Charles Spence of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at Oxford University, presenting research at the British Psychological Society conference, said drivers were inundated with visual stimuli and that non-visual warning signals could become common. He said research showed that they dramatically reduced front-to-rear-end collisions, the most common cause of car crashes.
Last year 3201 people were killed on Britain's roads while another 271,017 were injured. Driver error and poor reactions were blamed in five out of six accidents, said the Department of Transport.
Professor Spence said that if drivers were able to brake three-fifths of a second earlier, pile-ups could be cut by 60 per cent. Vibrating seatbelts can improve driver reaction times by two-fifths of a second while the addition of warning sounds, such as the toot of a horn, can improve this by a further one-fifth of a second.
"Multi-sensory warning signals appear to capture driver attention far more effectively than more traditional warning signals that stimulate only a single sense such as the driver's eyes or ears," he said.
"We don't currently use our sense of touch much while driving so the tactile signal doesn't overload the driver, it's not affected by background noise like the radio. The tactile component of the multi-sensory warning signal prepares the driver to make the appropriate response, while the car horn sound intuitively alerts them to where the attention is needed."
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