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 Overall, about 86 percent of Americans said they always used a seat
belt in 2012, an increase of 8.4 percent from 2002, the study found.
Despite this progress, only 2.2 percent of U.S. counties have
managed to achieve a government safety goal for reducing crash
deaths: getting at least 92 percent of drivers and front-seat
passengers to buckle up for every ride.
“Seat belts save lives,” said lead study author Dr. Jacob Sunshine
of the University of Washington in Seattle.
“The challenge is how to encourage the drivers and riders who don’t
use a safety belt every time they ride in a car to change their
behavior,” Sunshine said by email. “This could be achieved through
enhanced law enforcement and/or educational programs that clearly
show the harms of riding without a seat belt.”
In 2015, deaths from motor vehicle crashes had the largest
proportionate one-year increase since 1966, and 2016 appears to have
logged even more fatalities, researchers note in the journal Health
Affairs.
Seat belts can reduce crash fatalities by as much as 40 to 60
percent, the study authors note.
That message appears to resonate more in states that give drivers
more legal reasons to listen to it, the study suggests.
Counties with less seat belt use tended to be in North Dakota, South
Dakota, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Nebraska and Alaska. All of
these states have so-called “secondary enforcement” laws prohibiting
traffic stops just for failure to wear a seat belt; instead drivers
in these states can only be ticketed for seat belt violations if
they got pulled over for another reason.
Conversely, counties that had higher seat belt use were in North
Carolina, California, Maryland and metropolitan areas of Texas, all
states that had so-called “primary enforcement” laws on the books
allowing traffic stops just for failure to wear a seat belt.
Seat belt compliance rates were more than 10 percentage points
higher in counties with laws permitting tickets just for not
buckling up, the study found. Currently, 34 states and the District
of Columbia have these laws on the books.
Women tended to wear seat belts more often than men: 90 percent of
the time versus 82 percent of the time, the study also found.
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But men improved more during the study period, with compliance going
up by 11 percent from 2002 to 2012 compared to a 6 percent gain for
women.
The study isn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove that seat
belts save lives or that specific law enforcement policies directly
influence seat belt use. Researchers also didn’t examine crash or
fatality data.
Even so, the findings add to growing evidence suggesting that seat
belt laws can be effective at getting more drivers and passengers to
buckle up, said Dr. Lois Lee, an emergency medicine physician and
researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital who wasn’t involved in the
study.
The scant number of counties meeting that 92 percent U.S. target for
seat belt use might be explained in part by a lack of awareness of
the state laws, Lee said by email.
“Often people don't know the enforcement level - primary or
secondary - in their state, and the law is variably enforced,” Lee
said. “Thus people don't always have a strong incentive, except the
interest of their own health and the health of their passengers, to
buckle up every time.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2mW6P5S Health Affairs, online April 3, 2017
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