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Seat belt legislation

 
Wikipedia: Seat belt legislation
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Seat belt legislation requires the fitting of seat belts to motor vehicles and/or the wearing of seat belts by motor vehicle occupants.

Contents

History

Wiki letter w.svg This section requires expansion.

The legal requirement to fit seat belts began in the Australian states of Victoria and South Australia in 1964, with the compulsory fitting of seat belt anchorages at front outboard positions in new cars.[1] In 1965 cars built in Europe were required to be fitted with front seat belts.[2] This was followed in 1967, by the requirement in the United Kingdom 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.[1]

Predicted effects

The move towards seat belt wearing legislation started in Australia in the late 1960s, although it was echoed elsewhere.

Experiments using both crash test dummies and human cadavers also indicated that wearing seat belts should lead to reduced risk of death and injury in certain types of car crash.

As a result of such predictions 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.

Successive UK Governments proposed, but failed to deliver, seat belt wearing legislation throughout the 1970s[3]. 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: [4].

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.

Professor John Adams of University College London was sceptical of such claims and set out to analyse the effect of seat belt laws as then in force and assess how well they matched predictions. His findings were published in 1982 and can be found in the Society of Automotive Engineers transactions of that year[5]. His conclusion was that in the 18 countries surveyed, accounting for approximately 80% of the world's motoring, those countries with seat belt laws had fared no better, and in some cases (e.g. Sweden, Ireland and New Zealand) significantly worse than those without.

In summarising the paradox, Adams agreed that :

The evidence that the use of a seat belt improves a car occupant’s chances of surviving a crash is convincing. That a person travelling at speed inside a hard metal shell will stand a better chance of surviving a crash if he is restrained from rattling about inside the shell is both intuitively obvious and supported by an impressive body of empirical evidence.[6]

In order to explain the disparity between the agreed improvement in a crash and the observed results, Adams advanced the hypothesis that Protecting car occupants from the consequences of bad driving encourages bad driving.

He has suggested that a number of mechanisms are in play:

  • Better protected drivers take less care (risk compensation or risk homeostasis).
  • 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 (confounding), particularly early adopters.
  • Fatality rates are subject to considerable stochastic noise and comparison of single years or short periods can be misleading.

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.[7] 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[8] 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.[9]

In response the UK's Department of Transport commissioned a study on the effects of seat belt laws in Sweden, West Germany, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands and Norway. This study, known as "the Isles report" after its author, and which used the United Kingdom and Italy as controls for no-law countries, compared casualty trends for both those inside and outside cars between law and no-law states. The report predicted that, based on the experiences of the eight countries studied, a UK seat belt law would be followed by a 2.3% increase in fatalities among car occupants [10] [11].

Measured effects

Some reports from Australia indicated that the laws had been effective: a rising trend in fatalities pre-1970 had been arrested and reversed, and this was attributed to the effect of seat belt legislation. This attribution did not meet with universal acceptance: introduction of early seat belt laws coincided with the world oil crisis, and other national road safety initiatives. The United Kingdom experienced a reduction in casualties at the same time[12] (British seat belt legislation was not introduced until a decade later), which also coincided with the acclaimed Clunk Click Every Trip campaign to encourage voluntary wearing of seat belts. Claims of the number of lives saved, based on the extrapolation of trends pre-law, could not therefore be reliably associated solely with seat belt compulsion because so many other factors were also involved[13].

Side-effects of seat belts

Over the years numerous cases were documented of various fatalities and injuries caused by wearing seat-belts. Potentially lethal injuries such as crushed sternum and paralyzing neck injuries are common in high-speed collisions. 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 immense pressure from a high-speed impact can cause a seat-belt wearer's head to accelerate forward suddenly while the body is restrained, potentially causing paralyzing injuries.[14]

Non-car road users

From the beginning in Australia[15], and subsequently New Zealand[16], there had been indications that seat belt laws might increase deaths and injury among those outside cars, such as motorcyclists, cyclists and pedestrians[17]. Isles found that in Europe the predominant effect of seat belt legislation was of increased numbers of injuries to non-car users. He predicted that in the UK deaths to other road users would rise by approximately 150 per year in the event of compulsory seat belt wearing legislation. In terms of injuries to other road users the prediction was for an 11% increase in pedestrian injuries, with injuries to other road users climbing by 12 to 13% (numerically 7,000 and 36,000 respectively).[10]

The British law

The Isles report was written by a civil servant in the Department of Transport. It did not back the pre-existing and still current position of Government, and it was never published.[10] [11] It is known mainly because it was leaked to The Spectator magazine after the law was passed.

Owners of cars registered in Britain on or after 1 January 1965, were required by a law that came into effect on 31 December 1968[18] to have front seat belts fitted. Subsequently the requirement was extended to the back seats.

The law mandating the compulsory wearing of seat belts for front seat occupiers came into effect on January 31, 1983, in the UK[19]. Evidential breath testing was introduced at the same time.

There was a reduction in driver fatalities and an increase in fatalities of rear passengers (not covered by the law)[20]. A subsequent study of 19,000 cyclist and 72,000 pedestrian casualties at the time suggests that seat belt wearing drivers were 11-13% more likely to injure pedestrians and 7-8% more likely to injure cyclists [21]. In January 1986 an editorial in The Lancet noted the shortfall in predicted life-saving and "the unexplained and worrying increase in deaths of other road users"[22]. Shortly after this, legal compulsion was extended indefinitely.

Rodgers claimed in 1978, prior to his unsuccessful attempt to introduce seat belt compulsion, that "the best evidence" indicated a likely saving of a thousand lives and ten thousand injuries per year. On January 30, 2003, 20 years after the introduction of compulsory front seat belt wearing, the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS) published their Seat Belts Factsheet[23] which states:

"Seat belts are a proven way of reducing the severity of injuries. The government has estimated that since seat belt wearing was made compulsory in 1983 it has reduced casualties by at least 370 deaths and 7000 serious injuries per year for front seat belts and 70 deaths and 1000 serious injuries for rear seat belts" (DETR 1997).

Adams concludes that there is no evidence of the seat belt law having reduced overall fatality numbers, and that there is evidence of fatalities having migrated from drivers to vulnerable road users. Although the Government argued at the time that the law had saved lives, it has subsequently attributed almost all the benefit for the small reduction in overall driver fatalities to the introduction of evidential breath testing.[13]

According to the Durbin-Harvey report, commissioned by the Department of Transport following passage of the law, an analysis of fatality figures before and after the law shows:

  • a clear increase in pedestrian, cyclist, and rear-passenger fatalities in collisions involving passenger cars
  • no such increase in casualties in collisions involving buses and goods vehicles, which were exempt from the law
  • a reduction in the number of drivers found to be drunk at the scene of collisions
  • a reduction in overall fatalities between the hours of 10pm and 4am (peak hours for drink-driving offences)
  • no reduction in overall fatality rates outside these hours.[24]

Seat belt use is a binary: the belt is either worn or not. Belt laws, which tend to lead to substantial changes in wearing rates over very short periods, would, if the predictions of up to 50% reductions in fatalities are correct, be expected to demonstrate large scale changes in fatality figures. No such changes have been observed. Whether seat belts reduce fatalities, it is inescapably true that any reductions fall well below the predicted levels, a fact widely interpreted as supporting risk compensation theory.

Support for seat belt legislation

Lives saved by safety belts and air bags, according to NHTSA, DOT

Other authorities claim that seat belt legislation has reduced the number of casualties in road accidents. For example, this statistical analysis by the NHTSA claimed that seat belts save over 10,000 lives every year in the US. The FARS further writes: [2]

"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 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. The Victorian legislation coincided with the oil-crises of the early 1970s, a time when traffic injuries and deaths fell in most industrialised countries. Adams' analysis shows Victoria's injury trends as being above the average for all industrialised countries.

Current position

United States

Main article: Seat belt legislation in the United States

New York State passed the first seat belt law in the US in 1984 under the leadership of John D. States, an orthopedic surgeon who dedicated his career to improving automotive safety[25]. 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 16, 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 has no laws. [26] Georgia presently exempts pickup trucks from its seat belt law.

Many opponents object on the grounds that seat belt laws infringe on their civil liberties. They believe 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. They also believe that since deaths are caused by seatbelts in some kinds of accidents that the government has no right to legislate an activity (buckling up) that may cause a person's death in the hopes it will maybe save others. Opponents quote Benjamin Franklin who said "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety".[27][28][29]

The counterpoint to the libertarian view toward seatbelt laws is that mandatory usage not only reduces injuries and deaths but also reduces the economic cost to society. 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.[3]

Developing countries

In many developing countries, pedestrians, cyclists, rickshaw operators and moped users represent the majority of road users. Some believe such countries face a serious dilemma about importing "Western", "car-centered", models of road safety such as compulsory seat belt legislation. [30][31] 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 tonnes 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.[32]

Dilution of risk compensation effect

There is very little literature considering how risk compensation effects, subjective as they must be, change over time. Although there is good evidence that habitually unbelted drivers will take more risks when belted, and that habitually belted drivers will be more cautious when unbelted [8][7], by the nature of laws, new drivers will be habituated from the outset. An interesting footnote to the debate is analysis by Adams of the relationship between accident records and car ownership, a relationship known as Smeed's law[33]). It appears that this empirical rule relating car casualties to the level of car ownership has continued to hold across several decades of safety interventions, including seat belt laws. Smeed's law postulates that modern drivers, habituated from the outset to seat belt use, are also habituated from the outside to greater expectations of car performance: faster cornering, faster acceleration, later braking. Alternatively it theorizes that improvements are due to the increasing profile of safety interventions as car ownership increases, whatever the country, as road safety professionals prefer.[33]

Seat belt legislation around the world

Wiki letter w.svg This section requires expansion.

This section gives an overview of when seat belt legislation was first introduced in different countries. This includes both regional and national legislation.

Country Compulsory wearing Compulsory fitting Source
Cars Bus passengers Cars Buses
Driver Front passengers Rear passengers
Australia 1970[4]
Belgium 1973 (outside cities), 1975 (post-1967 cars), 1979 (all) 1990 2003 1978 2003 [5]
The European Union 1993       [6]
France 1973 (outside cities), 1975 (cities at night), 1979 (all) 1990 2003 1979   [7]

[8]
Germany 1976 1984 1999 1970, 1979 (back seat) 1999 [9]
Hungary 1976   1993       [10]
Hong Kong 1983 1983 1996   1996 (back seat)  

[11]
Ireland 1979   1992        
Japan     2008   1969   [12]
Malaysia 1979 2009       [13]
Netherlands 1976 1992   1975 (front) 1990 (rear)
New Zealand 1972 1972 (15 years and over), 1979 (8 years and over) 1989♣   1972 (vehicles registered after 1965), 1975 (after 1955)   [14]
Singapore 1973   1993 2008 1973    
Spain 1975            
Sweden 1975 1986 1969 (front) 1970 (rear) 2004 [15] [16]
United Kingdom 1983 1991 1965 RoSPA
United States 1985-1994 (except New Hampshire and American Samoa) 1966 2004 [17]

♣ - definitely introduced by this date, possibly earlier

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b "A Potted Seat Belt History". Drivers Technology. http://www.driverstechnology.co.uk/seatbelts.htm. 
  2. ^ "Seat Belts: History". RoSPA. http://www.rospa.com/roadsafety/advice/motorvehicles/seatbelt_history.htm. 
  3. ^ "RoSPA History - How Belting Up Became Law". RoSPA. http://www.rospa.org.uk/history/beltingup.htm. 
  4. ^ "RoSPA History - How Belting Up Became Law" (PDF). john adams. http://john-adams.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/Seat%20belts%20for%20significance.pdf. 
  5. ^ John Adams (1982) (PDF). The Efficacy of Seat Belt Legislation. The Society of Automotive Engineers. http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/~jadams/PDFs/SAE%20seatbelts.pdf. 
  6. ^ http://john-adams.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2006/failure%20of%20seatbelt%20legislation.pdf>
  7. ^ a b An experimental test of risk compensation: between-subject versus within-subject analyses Streff FM and Geller ES, Accident Analysis and Prevention, Aug;20(4):277-87. 1988
  8. ^ a b Janssen, W. Seat belt wearing and driving behaviour: An instrumented-vehicle study. Accident Analysis and Prevention.1994 Apr; Vol 26(2): 249-2
  9. ^ Wilde, Target Risk
  10. ^ a b c [1] Seat belt savings: wrong implications of European statistics. Isles JE, STG Division, Department of Transport, UK. Dated but not published April 1981. "The Isles Report"
  11. ^ a b Davis, R (1993). Death on the Streets: Cars and the Mythology of Road Safety. Leading Edge Books. ISBN 0-948135-46-8. 
  12. ^ Department for Transport, Transport Statistics.
  13. ^ a b John Adams (1995). Risk. Routledge. ISBN 1-85728-068-7. 
  14. ^ injuries caused by seatbelt - Trauma, Vol. 7, No. 4, 211-215 (2005), seatbelt injuries.
  15. ^ Evaluation of Automobile Safety Regulations: The case of Compulsory Seat Belt Legislation in Australia. by J.A.C. Coneybeare, Policy Sciences 12:27-39, 1980
  16. ^ Compulsory Seat Belt Use: Further Inferences, by P. Hurst Accident Analysis and Prevention., Vol 11: 27-33, 1979
  17. ^ Source: Department for Transport, Road Accidents Great Britain
  18. ^ "News and Views: Saftey Belt date". Autocar 129 (nbr 3801): page 43. date 19 December 1968. 
  19. ^ "20 facts for the 20th anniversary of front seat belt wearing". Think!. UK Department for Transport. http://www.thinkroadsafety.gov.uk/usergroups/factsheets/12.htm. 
  20. ^ Durbin J, Harvey A: The effects of seat belt legislation on road casualties in Great Britain, DtP, October 1985
  21. ^ Source:Methodological Issues in Testing the Hypothesis of Risk Compensation by Brian Dulisse, Accident Analysis and Prevention Vol. 25 (5): 285-292, 1997
  22. ^ Lancet, 11 January 1986, p75
  23. ^ "SEAT BELTS FACTSHEET - 20th ANNIVERSARY OF COMPULSORY FRONT SEAT BELT WEARING". UK Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety. 2003-01-30. http://www.pacts.org.uk/policy/briefings/seatbeltfactsheet.htm. 
  24. ^ Durbin-Harvey report, reported in Davis, Death on the Streets: Cars and the mythology of road safety
  25. ^ Click it or ticket
  26. ^ NTSB - Most Wanted
  27. ^ Jacoby, Jeff. Unbuckling the Voters. Boston Globe. August 25, 1994.
  28. ^ Seatbelt Laws Offend Notions of Freedom (Editorial). Greensboro News and Record, Page A10. June 28, 2003.
  29. ^ Seat-belt stops. Letters from readers. Minneapolis Star Tribune. February 9, 2001.
  30. ^ Road safety in less-motorized environments: future concerns Dinesh Mohan, International Journal of Epidemiology, Vol 31:527-532 2002
  31. ^ Seatbelt Legislation: Additional Information Shane Foran, British Medical Journal Rapid Responses, 9th January 2001
  32. ^ All must belt up in MPVs. The Star. Retrieved on 2009-1-1.
  33. ^ a b http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/~jadams/PDFs/smeed%27s%20law.pdf

References and further reading

  • John Adams (1995). Risk. Routledge. ISBN 1-85728-068-7.  Authoritative reference on risk compensation theory.
  • Wilde G.S. Target Risk PDE Publications, 1994
  • The Isles report "Seat belt savings: Implications of European Statistics", UK DoT, 1981, Sourced from Death on the Streets, Cars and the Mythology of Road Safety by Robert Davis, Leading Edge Press, North Yorkshire UK, 1992 and "Report questions whether seat belts save lives" by M. Hamer, New Scientist, 7 February 1985 p7
  • Evaluation of Automobile Safety Regulations: The case of Compulsory Seat Belt Legislation in Australia. by J.A.C. Coneybeare, Policy Sciences 12:27-39, 1980
  • Compulsory Seat Belt Use: Further Inferences, by P. Hurst Accident Analysis and Prevention., Vol 11: 27-33, 1979
  • Wilde G.S. Risk Homeostasis and Traffic Accidents Propositions, Deductions and Discussion of Dissension in Recent Reactions, Ergonomics 1988 Vol, 31, 4:439
  • Methodological Issues in Testing the Hypothesis of Risk Compensation by Brian Dulisse, Accident Analysis and Prevention Vol. 25 (5): 285-292, 1997
  • RS 255 The initial impact of seat belt legislation in Ireland by R. Hearne, An Foras Forbatha, Dublin, 1981
  • The efficacy of seat belt legislation: A comparative study of road accident fatality statistics from 18 countries, by J. Adams. Department of Geography University College, London 1981
  • Casualty Reductions, Whose Problem? By F. West-Oram, Traffic Engineering and Control, September 1990
  • The Puzzle of Seat Belts Explained, Press Release of the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society, April 1999
  • Reconsidering the effects of seat belt Laws and Their Enforcement Status by T.S. Dee Accident Analysis and Prevention., Vol 30(1): 1-10, 1998

External links

Links to sites/studies that endorse seat belts

Links to sites/studies skeptical/critical of seat belt legislation

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