During nine days in June 1983, 1984, and 1985, four major metropolitan areas of Virginia were surveyed to determine the extent to which safety restraints were being used by urban travelers. Observers stationed at selected signalized intersections displayed to stopped motorists a clipboard bearing the question, Are you wearing safety belts? The observers then approached the vehicles to visually verify any response given, and recorded whether safety belts or child safety seats were being used. They also recorded the license numbers of the vehicles and the sex and approximate age of each occupant. Results published in previous reports have shown that passage of the state's Child Safety Seat Law resulted in a significant positive change in the usage rates by passengers less than four years of age. The rates of usage for infants in 1983, 1984, and 1985 were nearly identical. Nearly three-fourths of the infants traveling as right front passengers (RFP's) and two-thirds of the infants classed as remaining passengers (RP's) were observed to be in safety restraints (Table 6). The 1985 data replicate earlier findings that when there was an infant in the car, and the infant was in a child safety seat, belt use by drivers and passengers was significantly higher than use rates by drivers and passengers when the infant was not in a child seat (Table 3). In 1984 and 1985, over 30% of the drivers, 40% of the RFP's, and 75% of the RP's used belt systems when a child was in a child seat, but fewer than 10% of these occupants were using safety restraints when the child was not in a child seat. The study also identified an association between the driver's use of safety belts and the use by other passengers. When drivers do not use belts, few passengers use belts. When drivers use lap belts, an increasing proportion of passengers use safety belts. Belt use rates by passengers are highest when drivers use the lap/shoulder belt combination (Table 2). This longitudinal study of observed belt use patterns shows an increase in the use of safety restraint systems by drivers and passengers. In June 1985, 28.4% of the drivers and 25.7% of all passengers were using belt systems (Table I). The rates in 1984 were 20.4% and 19.4% and those in 1983 were 16.4% and 19.0% An analysis of the data also produced additional findings that could relate to various educational or public information campaigns. These findings include the following: I. the percentage of belt use by female drivers and RFP's is higher than that for their male counterparts (Table 4); 2. belt use by drivers was highest in the afternoon, but use by passengers was highest in the morning (Table 5); 3. other than that for infants, belt use was highest for middle adult drivers and pre-adult passengers (Table 6); 4. belt use by drivers and passengers was greater in newer cars (Table 7); and 5. belt use was highest in the northern area and lowest in the western area of the state (Table 9). These findings lead to the conclusion that the Child Safety Seat Law has been responsible for a significant increase in restraint usage by infants. There also appears to have been a spillover effect that has increased safety restraint usage by other categories of vehicle occupants.

This report discusses the current environment which would influence the consideration of a mandatory safety belt use law in Virginia. First, the regulatory context fostered by the U.S. Department of Transportation's issuance of federal motor vehicle safety standard 208 is examined. This rule requires that automobile manufacturers install passive restraints such as airbags or automatic seat belts in all cars by 1989 unless states covering two-thirds of the nation's population enact mandatory safety belt use laws. Next is a discussion of the provisions of the mandatory use laws in effect in 16 states, along with data from New York and New Jersey, the first two states to enact such legislation. In New York State, safety belt usage increased from around 20% to nearly 78% following the effective date of the law. While the use of belts subsequently declined, it remained two or three times higher than before the law. A significant decline in highway fatalities was also noted following passage of the mandatory use law. Finally, data on safety belt usage and traffic deaths in Virginia are examined. According to statistics from the Fatal Accident Reporting System, of the 2,154 people killed in highway accidents in Virginia between 1982 and 1984, 2,076 (96%) were not wearing safety belts. Belt wearers, who constitute as much as 20% of the motorists, accounted for only 4% of the traffic deaths. A similar relationship is evident in the data for each of the Department of Motor Vehicle districts in the state.

Increasing seat belt use is one of the most effective and least costly ways of reducing the lives lost and injuries incurred on the nation's highways each year, yet about one in four drivers and front-seat passengers continues to ride unbuckled. The Transportation Research Board, in response to a congressional request for a study to examine the potential of in-vehicle technologies to increase belt use, formed a panel of 12 experts having expertise in the areas of automotive engineering, design, and regulation; traffic safety and injury prevention; human factors; survey research methods; economics; and technology education and consumer interest. This panel, named the Committee for the Safety Belt Technology Study, examined the potential benefits of technologies designed to increase belt use, determined how drivers view the acceptability of the technologies, and considered whether legislative or regulatory actions are necessary to enable their installation on passenger vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the study sponsor, funded and conducted interviews and focus groups of samples of different belt user groups to learn more about the potential effectiveness and acceptability of technologies ranging from seat belt reminder systems to more aggressive interlock systems, and provided the information collected to the study committee. The committee also supplemented its expertise by holding its second meeting in Dearborn, Michigan, where it met in proprietary sessions with several of the major automobile manufacturers, a key supplier, and a small business inventor of a shifter interlock system to learn of planned new seat belt use technologies as well as about company data concerning their effectiveness and acceptability. The committee's findings and recommendations are presented in this five-chapter report.

More than 40,000 people die each year in motor vehicle crashes in the United States, and many more are seriously injured. Reducing this toll is a major goal of governments at all levels. Since the 1960s, the number of fatalities per mile driven has fallen by 75 percent owing to a combination of public and private actions to improve driver performance, motor vehicles, the highway environment, and postcrash emergency response and medical care. As a result, thousands of deaths and millions of injuries have been prevented. Nevertheless, the consequences of motor vehicle crashes continue to be a major public health problem and the leading cause of death among children and young adults. Continued growth in motor vehicle travel means that larger and larger improvements in crash rates are needed to produce any reduction in the total number of people killed and injured in crashes each year. Yet improvements in crash rates in the United States have been lagging behind those of many other developed countries.

Examines deaths, injuries, and property damage from traffic crashes. Evans (research scientist, General Motors Research Labs, Warren, Michigan) applies the methods of science to illuminate the characteristics of these problems--their origin and nature as well as their severity. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR