Lisa Lopez Snyder
February 27, 2025
When Brutus raises his hand at the end of the video, the school kids stretch their hands high and sing the “Seat Belt Boogie” song along with him: “Until you reach four-foot nine, sit in the booster all the time!” By the video’s end, the children are still clapping and dancing.
The video, shown in classrooms across Ohio, is part of the Buckle Up with Brutus program, which aims to help prevent traffic injuries — a leading cause of death for children and young adults. A program of The Ohio State University School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences’ (HRS) Injury Biomechanics Research Center (IBRC), called Buckle Up with Brutus, has expanded to focus on second and third grade students.
Julie A. Mansfield, PhD, research associate professor of the IBRC and co-director of the Center for Child Injury Prevention Studies (CChIPS), says its recent partnership with the Ohio Department of Public Safety (ODPS) and Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) aims to specifically focus on elementary school-age children, an often-overlooked group in these educational campaigns.
“Many times, child safety programs focus mostly on infants and babies and the child seats that have the five-point harness for the younger kids,” she says. “Then, as the kids enter booster stage age, around elementary school age, they can fall between the cracks, and caregivers may not necessarily have access to information about how to keep that age of children safe in the vehicle.”
For Ohio children, the program’s need is clear: seat belt use rate in Ohio ranks in the bottom 10 states. This exceptionally low usage rate — 80.8 percent compared with the national average of 91.9 percent — has declined more than five percent since 2019 despite increasing nationally during the same period.
In 2022, motor vehicle crashes were the second-leading cause of death nationally for children ages 4 to 10 years, surpassed only by cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that 344 children ages 4 to 10 years died in motor vehicle crashes in 2022, at least 38 percent of whom were unrestrained.
The partnership with ODPS and SADD revamps the current Buckle Up with Brutus program to show kids that child safety isn't just for babies, she says, and that “it’s really important for grown-ups, big kids, and even Brutus himself to wear a seat belt and buckle up correctly.”
ODPS is coordinating with the Ohio School Resource Officers Association, which together with law enforcement, is presenting and promoting the program throughout Ohio schools.
The seat belt safety effort is personal for Mansfield, who brings her background as a biomedical and mechanical engineer to the field of child injury prevention. When she began her graduate program in engineering at Ohio State, she said she was drawn to the HRS Injury Biomechanics Research Center, where interdisciplinary research teams are conducting expansive auto injury biomechanics research.
“Unfortunately, we all probably know somebody who has been hurt or affected by a car crash,” she says. “We all ride in cars. We all have a need to be protected in them. So, for me, it was a really rewarding to apply my engineering knowledge to try to understand the areas in which the human body is injured and then explore how we can mitigate those situations to protect the body better.”
Today at the IBRC, she works alongside other Ohio State engineer researchers to examine the causes and mechanisms of injury and translate their findings into commercial applications and public prevention programs. HRS colleague Gretchen Baker, PhD, and biomedical engineering PhD student Rosalie Connell were instrumental in developing this latest Buckle Up With Brutus collaboration.
IBRC worked with Ohio State’s Scarlet Studio, an internal marketing and communications agency, to create and design the program materials, including the logo of Brutus in a seat belt and the new educational videos.
The resources include a classroom curriculum for elementary schools, adapted from one originally developed by SADD. The curriculum includes talking points for presenters, activities for students and printable resources for each lesson. A discussion guidebook includes topics such how to be a good car rider and how kids can advocate for their own safety.
The “Seat Belt Boogie” dance video helps reinforce ways to stay safe in the car in a fun way, Mansfield adds. “That's been a really good activity for the kids in the classroom. The kids love songs, and they remember the messages in the songs, too.”
Buckle Up with Brutus materials are available for teachers, resource officers, caregivers and others.
Mansfield says the Buckle Up with Brutus program has been taught in 28 schools, reaching 3,887 students statewide, she says.
“We are continuing to promote the program statewide and look forward to even more growth.”
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Learn more
otso.ohio.gov/programs/buckle-up-with-brutus/
buckleup.osu.edu
ibrc.osu.edu