Seat belt legislation
Encyclopedia
Seat belt legislation requires the fitting of seat belt
s to motor vehicles and/or the wearing of seat belts by motor vehicle occupants. The U.S. state of Wisconsin introduced legislation in 1961 requiring front seat belt anchorages to be fitted to cars. The Australian state of Victoria mandated front and rear seat belt use from 1970.
to fit three-point belts in the front outboard positions, and by the requirement in South Australia to fit belts (two- or three-point) to the front outboard positions, in all new cars.
The use of seat belts by vehicle occupants was made compulsory in Victoria, Australia, in 1970, followed by the rest of Australia and some other countries during the 1970s and 1980s. The subsequent dramatic decline in road deaths, equivalent to thousands of lives saved in Australia alone, is generally attributed to seat belt laws and subsequent road safety campaigns.
Successive UK Governments proposed, but failed to deliver, seat belt legislation throughout the 1970s. In one such attempt in 1979 similar claims for potential lives and injuries saved were advanced. William Rodgers
, then Secretary of State for Transport
in the Callaghan Labour Government (1976–1979)
, stated that: "On the best available evidence of accidents in this country - evidence which has not been seriously contested - compulsion could save up to 1000 lives and 10,000 injuries a year."
This section gives an overview of when seat belt legislation was first introduced in different countries. This includes both regional and national legislation.
♣ - definitely introduced by this date, possibly earlier
Studies by road safety authorities conclude that seat belt legislation has reduced the number of casualties in road accidents.
Experiments using both crash test dummies
and human cadaver
s also indicated that wearing seat belts should lead to reduced risk of death and injury in car crashes.
Studies of accident outcomes suggest that fatality rates among car occupants are reduced by between 30 and 50 per cent if seat belts are worn. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that death risks for a driver wearing a lap-shoulder seat belt are reducing by 48 per cent. The same study indicated that in 2007, an estimated 15 147 lives were saved by seat belts in the United States and that, if seat belt use were increased to 100 per cent an additional 5024 lives would have been saved.[www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pubs/811206.pdf]
An earlier statistical analysis by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
(NHTSA) claimed that seat belts save over 10,000 lives every year in the US. According to Fatality Analysis Reporting System
(FARS) data:
In Victoria, Australia
the use of seat belts became compulsory in 1970. By 1974 decreases of 37% in deaths and 41% in injuries, including a decrease of 27% in spinal injuries, were observed, compared with extrapolations based on pre-law trends.
By 2009, despite large increases in population and the number of vehicles, road deaths in Victoria had fallen below 300, less than a third of the 1970 level, the lowest since records were kept, and far below the per capita rate in jurisdictions such as the United States. This reduction was generally attributed to aggressive road safety campaigns beginning with the seat belt laws.
, an orthopedic surgeon who dedicated his career to improving automotive safety. In the USA, seatbelt legislation varies by state. Depending on which state you are in, not wearing a seatbelt in the front seat is either a primary offense or a secondary offense, with the exception of New Hampshire, which does not have a law requiring people over age 18 to wear a seat belt. In the front seat, the driver and each passenger must wear a seat belt, one person per belt. Though in states such as New York, New Hampshire, Michigan, etc. (See article State Seat Belt Laws), seat belts in the rear seats are not mandatory for people over the age of 18, though it is extremely advised. The driver and front-seat passengers aged 16 or older can be fined up to $50 each for failure to buckle up. A primary offense means that a police officer can pull you over for the seatbelt law violation alone, and secondary offense that you can be punished for a seatbelt law violation only if you are already pulled over for another reason. By January 2007 25 states and the District of Columbia had primary seatbelt laws, 24 secondary seatbelt laws, and New Hampshire had no laws. Georgia presently exempts pickup trucks from its seat belt law.
In 2009, Public Health Law Research published several evidence briefs summarizing the research assessing the effect of a specific law or policy on public health. One stated that "Safety belt laws work, but there is strong evidence to support that primary enforcement safety belt laws are more effective than secondary enforcement laws in increasing seat belt use and reducing crash injuries."
Another found that "there is strong evidence that enhanced seat belt enforcement interventions can substantially increase seat belt use and its associated benefits."
was the first province to pass a law which required vehicle occupants to wear seat belts in 1976.
In many developing countries
, pedestrians, cyclists, rickshaw operators and moped users represent the majority of road users. In the state of Gujarat in India
, seat belts have been made compulsory in six major cities, Ahmedabad
, Bhavnagar
, Jamnagar
, Rajkot, Surat and Vadodara
.
In Malaysia, there are four stages pertaining to the legislation of safety belt laws. The first stage was implemented in 1979, making the wearing of seat belts compulsory for the driver and front seat passenger. On January 1, 2009, the second stage mandated the wearing of rear seat belts. Passenger vehicles registered prior to January 1, 1995 and those weighing more than 3.5 tons are exempted from this rule. The third and fourth stages, which will deal with baby and child seats and the number of passengers in a vehicle, have not taken effect.
and risk homeostasis
advanced by researchers John Adams and Gerald Wilde. The idea of this theory is that, if the risk of death or injury from a car crash is reduced by the wearing of seat belts, drivers will respond by reducing the precautions they take against crashes.
Along with many others Adams accepts the hypothesis that wearing seatbelts improves a vehicle occupant’s chances of surviving a crash.
In order to explain the disparity between the agreed improvement in crash survival and the observed results, Adams and Wilde argue that protecting someone from the consequences of risky behaviour may tend to encourage greater risk taking. Wilde states "... to compel a person to use protection from the consequences of hazardous driving, as seat belt laws do, is to encourage hazardous driving. A fine for non-compliance will encourage seat belt use, but the fact that the law fails to increase people's desire to be safe encourages compensatory behaviour." Studies and experiments have been carried out to examine the risk compensation theory. In one experiment subjects were asked to drive go-karts around a track under various conditions. It was found that subjects who started driving belted did not drive any slower when subsequently unbelted, but those who started driving unbelted did drive consistently faster when subsequently belted. A study of habitual non-seatbelt wearers driving in freeway conditions found evidence that they had adapted to seatbelt use by adopting higher driving speeds and closer following distances In another study, taxi drivers who were habitual non-wearers were timed over a route with passengers who did, and others who did not, insist on the driver wearing a belt. They completed the route faster when belted.
In addition to risk compensation, Adams has suggested other mechanisms that may lead to inaccurate or unsupportable predictions of positive benefits from seatbelt legislation.
. They argue that not wearing seat belts is a victimless crime as the only person harmed is the one making that decision for himself about his own life.
The counterpoint to the libertarian view toward seatbelt laws is that mandatory usage may reduce injuries and deaths (while possibly increasing the number of accidents) but also reduces the economic cost to society. Another notable scenario is of rear-seated passengers being forced forward in a crash and thus inadvertently harming the driver or front passenger, which could be argued as an infringement of his/her liberties. A University of Wisconsin study demonstrated that car accident victims who had not worn seatbelts cost the hospital (and the state in the case of the uninsured) on average 25% more. However, the psychological benefit to a road user in not wearing a seatbelt is difficult to compare to monetary savings, owing to the lack of a common unit of comparison.
Links to sites/studies skeptical/critical of seat belt legislation
+
Seat belt
A seat belt or seatbelt, sometimes called a safety belt, is a safety harness designed to secure the occupant of a vehicle against harmful movement that may result from a collision or a sudden stop...
s to motor vehicles and/or the wearing of seat belts by motor vehicle occupants. The U.S. state of Wisconsin introduced legislation in 1961 requiring front seat belt anchorages to be fitted to cars. The Australian state of Victoria mandated front and rear seat belt use from 1970.
History
In 1961 the U.S. state of Wisconsin introduced legislation requiring seat belts to be fitted to the front outboard seat positions of cars. New York introduced similar laws in 1962. The Australian states of Victoria and South Australia followed in 1964, with a similar requirement. In 1965 cars built in Europe were required to be fitted with front seat belts. This was followed in 1967, by the requirement in the United KingdomUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
to fit three-point belts in the front outboard positions, and by the requirement in South Australia to fit belts (two- or three-point) to the front outboard positions, in all new cars.
The use of seat belts by vehicle occupants was made compulsory in Victoria, Australia, in 1970, followed by the rest of Australia and some other countries during the 1970s and 1980s. The subsequent dramatic decline in road deaths, equivalent to thousands of lives saved in Australia alone, is generally attributed to seat belt laws and subsequent road safety campaigns.
Successive UK Governments proposed, but failed to deliver, seat belt legislation throughout the 1970s. In one such attempt in 1979 similar claims for potential lives and injuries saved were advanced. William Rodgers
William Rodgers, Baron Rodgers of Quarry Bank
William Thomas Rodgers, Baron Rodgers of Quarry Bank, PC , usually known as William Rodgers but also often known as Bill Rodgers, was one of the "Gang of Four" of senior British Labour Party politicians who defected to form the Social Democratic Party...
, then Secretary of State for Transport
Secretary of State for Transport
The Secretary of State for Transport is the member of the cabinet responsible for the British Department for Transport. The role has had a high turnover as new appointments are blamed for the failures of decades of their predecessors...
in the Callaghan Labour Government (1976–1979)
Callaghan Ministry
This is the Cabinet list for former Prime Minister James Callaghan. His Cabinet was formed on 5 April 1976 after he took over from Harold Wilson and ended, upon his resignation, on 4 May 1979.-The Ministry:-See also:...
, stated that: "On the best available evidence of accidents in this country - evidence which has not been seriously contested - compulsion could save up to 1000 lives and 10,000 injuries a year."
This section gives an overview of when seat belt legislation was first introduced in different countries. This includes both regional and national legislation.
♣ - definitely introduced by this date, possibly earlier
Effects
Experiments using both crash test dummies
Crash test dummy
Crash test dummies are full-scale anthropomorphic test devices that simulate the dimensions, weight proportions and articulation of the human body, and are usually instrumented to record data about the dynamic behavior of the ATD in simulated vehicle impacts...
and human cadaver
Cadaver
A cadaver is a dead human body.Cadaver may also refer to:* Cadaver tomb, tomb featuring an effigy in the form of a decomposing body* Cadaver , a video game* cadaver A command-line WebDAV client for Unix....
s also indicated that wearing seat belts should lead to reduced risk of death and injury in car crashes.
Studies of accident outcomes suggest that fatality rates among car occupants are reduced by between 30 and 50 per cent if seat belts are worn. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that death risks for a driver wearing a lap-shoulder seat belt are reducing by 48 per cent. The same study indicated that in 2007, an estimated 15 147 lives were saved by seat belts in the United States and that, if seat belt use were increased to 100 per cent an additional 5024 lives would have been saved.[www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pubs/811206.pdf]
An earlier statistical analysis by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is an agency of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government, part of the Department of Transportation...
(NHTSA) claimed that seat belts save over 10,000 lives every year in the US. According to Fatality Analysis Reporting System
Fatality Analysis Reporting System
Fatality Analysis Reporting System was created in the United States by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to provide an overall measure of highway safety, to help suggest solutions, and to help provide an objective basis to evaluate the effectiveness of motor vehicle safety...
(FARS) data:
- "Research on the effectiveness of child safety seats has found them to reduce fatal injury by 71% for infants less than 1 year old and by 54% for toddlers 1-4 years old in cars. [...] Among passenger vehicle occupants over 4 years old, safety belts saved an estimated 11,889 lives in 2000."
In Victoria, Australia
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....
the use of seat belts became compulsory in 1970. By 1974 decreases of 37% in deaths and 41% in injuries, including a decrease of 27% in spinal injuries, were observed, compared with extrapolations based on pre-law trends.
By 2009, despite large increases in population and the number of vehicles, road deaths in Victoria had fallen below 300, less than a third of the 1970 level, the lowest since records were kept, and far below the per capita rate in jurisdictions such as the United States. This reduction was generally attributed to aggressive road safety campaigns beginning with the seat belt laws.
United States
New York State passed the first seat belt law in the US in 1984 under the leadership of John D. StatesJohn D. States
John Dunham States is an orthopedic surgeon who has dedicated his career to improving automotive safety. He is a graduate of the University of Rochester, and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School...
, an orthopedic surgeon who dedicated his career to improving automotive safety. In the USA, seatbelt legislation varies by state. Depending on which state you are in, not wearing a seatbelt in the front seat is either a primary offense or a secondary offense, with the exception of New Hampshire, which does not have a law requiring people over age 18 to wear a seat belt. In the front seat, the driver and each passenger must wear a seat belt, one person per belt. Though in states such as New York, New Hampshire, Michigan, etc. (See article State Seat Belt Laws), seat belts in the rear seats are not mandatory for people over the age of 18, though it is extremely advised. The driver and front-seat passengers aged 16 or older can be fined up to $50 each for failure to buckle up. A primary offense means that a police officer can pull you over for the seatbelt law violation alone, and secondary offense that you can be punished for a seatbelt law violation only if you are already pulled over for another reason. By January 2007 25 states and the District of Columbia had primary seatbelt laws, 24 secondary seatbelt laws, and New Hampshire had no laws. Georgia presently exempts pickup trucks from its seat belt law.
In 2009, Public Health Law Research published several evidence briefs summarizing the research assessing the effect of a specific law or policy on public health. One stated that "Safety belt laws work, but there is strong evidence to support that primary enforcement safety belt laws are more effective than secondary enforcement laws in increasing seat belt use and reducing crash injuries."
Another found that "there is strong evidence that enhanced seat belt enforcement interventions can substantially increase seat belt use and its associated benefits."
United Kingdom
In the UK, seat belts must be worn at all times if they are fitted to a vehicle. Passengers may be exempt from wearing a seat belt on medical grounds only. Since September 18, 2006, children travelling in the UK must also use an appropriate child seat in addition to the standard seat belt.Canada
All provinces in Canada have primary enforcement seat belt laws. OntarioOntario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
was the first province to pass a law which required vehicle occupants to wear seat belts in 1976.
Developing countries
In many developing countries
Developing country
A developing country, also known as a less-developed country, is a nation with a low level of material well-being. Since no single definition of the term developing country is recognized internationally, the levels of development may vary widely within so-called developing countries...
, pedestrians, cyclists, rickshaw operators and moped users represent the majority of road users. In the state of Gujarat in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, seat belts have been made compulsory in six major cities, Ahmedabad
Ahmedabad
Ahmedabad also known as Karnavati is the largest city in Gujarat, India. It is the former capital of Gujarat and is also the judicial capital of Gujarat as the Gujarat High Court has its seat in Ahmedabad...
, Bhavnagar
Bhavnagar
-Topography:Bhavnagar is a coastal city in the eastern coast of Saurashtra, also known as Kathiawar, located at . It has an average elevation of 24 metres . It occupies area of 53.30 km². General slope dips in the northeasterly direction at the apex of Gulf of Khambhat...
, Jamnagar
Jamnagar
Jamnagar is a city and a municipal corporation in Jamnagar district in the Indian state of Gujarat. The city was built up substantially by Maharaja Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji in the 1920s, when the district was known as Nawanagar. The district lies just to the south of the Gulf of Kutch and is...
, Rajkot, Surat and Vadodara
Vadodara
Vadodara formerly known as Baroda is the third most populated city in the Indian State of Gujarat . It is one of the four cities with the population of over 1 million...
.
In Malaysia, there are four stages pertaining to the legislation of safety belt laws. The first stage was implemented in 1979, making the wearing of seat belts compulsory for the driver and front seat passenger. On January 1, 2009, the second stage mandated the wearing of rear seat belts. Passenger vehicles registered prior to January 1, 1995 and those weighing more than 3.5 tons are exempted from this rule. The third and fourth stages, which will deal with baby and child seats and the number of passengers in a vehicle, have not taken effect.
Opposition
A number of groups and individuals are opposed to seat belt legislation. The most common grounds for opposition are:- The view that laws requiring the wearing of seat belts are an infringement of individual liberty
- Claims that official estimates of the number of lives saved by seat belts are overstated or fail to take into account additional risks for other road users
Risk compensation and other theories
The most common basis for disputing estimates of the benefits of seat belts is risk compensationRisk compensation
In ethology, risk compensation is an effect whereby individual people may tend to adjust their behavior in response to perceived changes in risk. It is seen as self-evident that individuals will tend to behave in a more cautious manner if their perception of risk or danger increases...
and risk homeostasis
Risk homeostasis
Risk homeostasis is a hypothesis about risk, developed by Gerald J.S. Wilde, a professor emeritus of psychology at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. This hypothesis is elucidated in Wilde's book. The idea of risk homeostasis has garnered criticism. The hypothesis of risk homeostasis...
advanced by researchers John Adams and Gerald Wilde. The idea of this theory is that, if the risk of death or injury from a car crash is reduced by the wearing of seat belts, drivers will respond by reducing the precautions they take against crashes.
Along with many others Adams accepts the hypothesis that wearing seatbelts improves a vehicle occupant’s chances of surviving a crash.
In order to explain the disparity between the agreed improvement in crash survival and the observed results, Adams and Wilde argue that protecting someone from the consequences of risky behaviour may tend to encourage greater risk taking. Wilde states "... to compel a person to use protection from the consequences of hazardous driving, as seat belt laws do, is to encourage hazardous driving. A fine for non-compliance will encourage seat belt use, but the fact that the law fails to increase people's desire to be safe encourages compensatory behaviour." Studies and experiments have been carried out to examine the risk compensation theory. In one experiment subjects were asked to drive go-karts around a track under various conditions. It was found that subjects who started driving belted did not drive any slower when subsequently unbelted, but those who started driving unbelted did drive consistently faster when subsequently belted. A study of habitual non-seatbelt wearers driving in freeway conditions found evidence that they had adapted to seatbelt use by adopting higher driving speeds and closer following distances In another study, taxi drivers who were habitual non-wearers were timed over a route with passengers who did, and others who did not, insist on the driver wearing a belt. They completed the route faster when belted.
In addition to risk compensation, Adams has suggested other mechanisms that may lead to inaccurate or unsupportable predictions of positive benefits from seatbelt legislation.
- Case-control studies based on voluntary use of safety aids can attribute to the aid benefits that actually come from the risk-averse nature of those likely to use them voluntarily (confoundingConfoundingIn statistics, a confounding variable is an extraneous variable in a statistical model that correlates with both the dependent variable and the independent variable...
), particularly early adopters. - Fatality rates are subject to considerable stochasticStochasticStochastic refers to systems whose behaviour is intrinsically non-deterministic. A stochastic process is one whose behavior is non-deterministic, in that a system's subsequent state is determined both by the process's predictable actions and by a random element. However, according to M. Kac and E...
noise and comparison of single years or short periods can be misleading.
Individual liberty
Occasional opponents have objected to the laws on libertarian principles. Some do so on the grounds that seat belt laws infringe on their civil libertiesCivil liberties
Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labour, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right...
. They argue that not wearing seat belts is a victimless crime as the only person harmed is the one making that decision for himself about his own life.
The counterpoint to the libertarian view toward seatbelt laws is that mandatory usage may reduce injuries and deaths (while possibly increasing the number of accidents) but also reduces the economic cost to society. Another notable scenario is of rear-seated passengers being forced forward in a crash and thus inadvertently harming the driver or front passenger, which could be argued as an infringement of his/her liberties. A University of Wisconsin study demonstrated that car accident victims who had not worn seatbelts cost the hospital (and the state in the case of the uninsured) on average 25% more. However, the psychological benefit to a road user in not wearing a seatbelt is difficult to compare to monetary savings, owing to the lack of a common unit of comparison.
Side-effects of seat belts
Critics have pointed to fatalities and injuries caused by wearing seat-belts. Chest injury may cause cardiac arrest, lung bruises are amongst the most common causes of death by seat-belts especially for people of weak heart such as the elderly who can also suffer a heart attack and not be able to free from the seatbelt in order to get to help. In neck injury cases, the deceleration from a high-speed impact can cause a seat-belt wearer's head to continue forward suddenly while the body is restrained, potentially causing paralyzing injuries. A study of such injuries notes "Seatbelts save lives. However, they may cause injury to adjacent structures and when they malfunction can cause injury to the abdominal viscera, bony skeleton and vascular structures. The motor industry has attempted to reduce these injuries by modification of vehicle design and safety equipment."External links
Links to sites/studies that endorse seat belts:- U.S. Department of Transportation: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration(NHTSA): Occupant Protection
- PDF Seat Belt Wearing in Scotland: A Second Study of Compliance
- UK Department for Transport: THINK! Road Safety
- Prevention Institute: Seatbelts: Current Issues
- Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 85, pp. 828-843, 2003
Links to sites/studies skeptical/critical of seat belt legislation
+