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SPH prof's research helps boosts buckle-up bill

By Hope Green

It happens all too often: a car crashes, a driver or passenger is killed on impact, and police say the victim had not been wearing a seat belt. It happens, even though well-publicized studies show that buckling up can reduce the risk of serious injuries in a motor vehicle accident by up to 50 percent.

Despite passing a seat belt law in 1994, which applies to adults as well as children, Massachusetts has an abysmal record on belt use. Only North Dakota is worse, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). But recently, a BU professor's expert testimony on Beacon Hill helped jump-start a proposal for a tougher law.

	A Massachusetts state trooper speaks with a driver after he was stopped for speeding and gives him a warning for not wearing a seat belt. If everyone buckled up in the Bay State, an estimated 75 to 100 deaths and 15,000 injuries would be prevented each year. Republished with the permission of Globe Newspaper Company, Inc.

Ralph Hingson, professor and chairman of social and behavioral sciences at the School of Public Health, has conducted annual seat belt surveys for the Governor's Highway Safety Bureau for the past 15 years. Currently he is a champion of a Senate bill that aims to establish a system of primary enforcement. This would allow police to pull over and ticket a person solely on the basis of observing an unbuckled driver or passenger.

As the law now stands, an officer can write a $25 seat belt citation only after stopping a vehicle for another infraction, such as speeding or having an expired inspection sticker. Delivered in this manner, Hingson says, the penalty does not have sufficient psychological impact to change the public's behavior.

"A primary belt law is the most effective measure to increase belt use," he said at a March 22 hearing on the bill before the state legislature's Joint Committee on Public Safety. "Simply increasing safety belt violations issued by police will not increase the proportion of motorists who are belted."

Members of the House-Senate panel also heard from a woman who had sustained brain damage in a car accident and from Robert Redfern, former head of the New England Association of Chiefs of Police, whose 22-year-old son was killed in a crash in 1992. In both cases, the victims had not been belted in.

That morning, the legislators unanimously voted the bill out of committee and onto the Senate floor.

"This was the first time I've ever seen a Massachusetts committee do that with a seat belt bill," Hingson says. "It was very gratifying to see it move so quickly. Most bills are killed in committee and often are not even voted on."

By comparing his findings with data from other states, Hingson has over the years mounted a formidable case for primary enforcement. In 1994, when Massachusetts became the 45th state to pass a general seat belt law, belt use in the state initially jumped from 34 percent to 52 percent. But by December 2000, that figure had dipped to 50 percent.

By contrast, during that same period the NHTSA found that the national buckle-up rate went from 58 percent to 71 percent. States with primary enforcement laws average 77 percent compliance. Hingson estimates that if Massachusetts had primary enforcement, there would be 20 to 25 fewer deaths and 4,000 to 6,000 fewer injuries resulting from traffic accidents each year.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving has rallied behind the cause of primary seat belt enforcement, notes Hingson, who is a member of the group's national board of directors. A 1999 U.S. Department of Transportation survey shows that of all fatalities caused by drunk drivers in Massachusetts, only 14 percent of the victims were wearing seat belts.

"If every state were to adopt a primary seat belt enforcement law," Hingson says, "there would be 600 fewer alcohol-related deaths each year nationwide, and probably another thousand where alcohol is not an issue. It's probably as powerful a piece of legislation for reducing alcohol-related traffic deaths as lowering the legal blood-alcohol limit."

Parents have additional cause to support the proposed law, says Hingson. His 1999 survey found that only 43 percent of Massachusetts children age 6 to 12 wear their seat belts. Only 37 percent of 16- to 19-year-olds belt in, even though teenagers are two to three times more likely to die or be injured in traffic accidents than the rest of the population.

When California changed its seat belt law from secondary to primary, a study there showed a 25 percent increase in belt use among people age 16 to 19.

A seat belt law applying only to young people would be misguided, adds Hingson, because his studies on belt use show that children and teenagers riding with adults usually follow their elders' example.

"We need to let people know that this law should apply to everybody," he says.

If approved by the full Senate, the primary-enforcement bill then has to clear a House of Representatives committee before the entire House can vote on it. Last summer the measure passed the Senate but died in a House floor debate at the end of the legislative session.

30 March 2001
Boston University
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