The Traffic Section of the Georgia Public Safety Training Center/Georgia Police Academy proudly assisted Robert McCart’s Gilmer Middle School STEAM class with learning more about child seatbelt safety with a live test crash.
During the experiment, two cars were retrofitted with the three seatbelt prototypes and were transported to the Georgia Public Safety Training Center in Forsyth, GA. McCart’s STEAM class travelled to GPSTC and placed mannequins in the vehicles using the seatbelt prototypes. Members from the Georgia State Patrol SCRT, Union CityPolice, GPSTC staff, and multiple others conducted a live test crash with the two vehicles, enabling the students to test their prototype seatbelts.
The crash test is part of the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Contest. The nationwide competition increases interest in science, technology, engineering, agriculture and math (STEAM). The Gilmer Middle School STEAM class has moved to the national round of the competition.
The class was motivated to research child seatbelt safety after one of their classmates was involved in a near fatal collision. McCart encouraged his students to design, engineer and test new seatbelt prototypesfor their submission to the national competition.
The live test crashes were resourceful teaching tools for the STEAM class. Data collected from the test crash will be used for the STEAM students and in the Accident Reconstruction Training Program at GPSTC.
