PROGRAMS

Seat Belts

Facts

Research shows that adults who wear their seat belts are more likely to require their children to wear their seat belts.

Reducing the number of collision-related injuries will reduce medical costs paid by society. According to a Harborview study, in 1999, there were 1,865 unbuckled crash victims who had to be hospitalized for their injuries when a seat belt would have prevented their hospitalization. According to the preliminary findings of this study, unbuckled Washington motorists tally up $51 million per year in preventable hospital costs just because they are unbuckled.

When people are seriously injured in collisions, the long-term medical costs often exceed insurance limits and then these costs must be paid for by tax-supported revenue sources.

Most fatal collisions happen close to home. An analysis of WTSC data showed that 86% of drivers in fatal crashes were killed while driving within 15 miles of home. (1992 to 1996 data.)

A study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that the level of education a person has corresponds with their vehicle death rate. Men and women without a high school diploma had three times the fatality risk of those who had some education beyond high school.

The highest death rates were among white men who had not graduated from high school. The study also found that fatally injured drivers who had not completed high school had the lowest rates of seat belt use and the highest blood alcohol concentrations in crashes.

Among the people (males) ages 16 to 19, traffic deaths per billion vehicle miles traveled showed a higher death rate for Hispanics and African Americans.

• Caucasian death rate per billion vehicle miles traveled: 30
• Hispanic death rate per billion vehicle miles traveled: 44
• African American death rate per billion vehicle miles traveled: 45

Buckled Adults Buckle Up Kids:
Each year six out of ten children who die in motor vehicle crashes are not belted. About half of them would be alive today had they been buckled up. Research shows that if a driver is buckled 87% of the time, children are buckled; but if the driver is unbuckled, child restraint use drops to only 24%. This statistic comes from the National Safety Council's Air Bag and Safety Belt Campaign.

Belted People Don't Kill Other People:
A study conducted at the University of Tokyo examined 100,000 collisions involving front and rear passengers. The study found that drivers who are buckled up have five times the risk of dying in a collision if their rear seat passengers are not buckled up. The injuries to the driver and front seat passenger are caused when the people in the back who are not buckled up catapult to the front. The force of this human body flying into the front seat is calculated to be 3.5 tons for a 30-mile per hour crash. The study found that 80% of the deaths from the crashes could have been eliminated if the rear seat occupants had been buckled up. The study results were recently published in The Lancet.

A study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that only 38% of respondents said they always use seat belts when riding in the rear seat of a car.

Collision deaths affect minority populations:
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death among Latinos ages 1 to 44. At highest risk are Hispanic children ages 5 to 12 who are 72% more likely to die in motor vehicle crashes than non-Hispanic children.

A national study that linked crash data with death certificates to determine demographic and ethnic information about drivers found that Native Americans have more than two times the death rate of Caucasians. There were 33 Indian deaths per 100,000 population vs. 16 deaths per 100,000 for the Caucasian population. Indians also had the lowest seat belt use rate.

Crashes are the leading cause of death and injury to African American children ages 0 to 14. Black and Hispanic children are nearly three times as likely to die in a motor vehicle crash.