The efficacy of seat belt legislation

The countries surveyed in this report contain over 80 percent of the world's car population. Most of them experienced a substantial decrease in road accident fatalities after the 1973 oil crisis. The decrease was greater in those countries that did not pass seat belt laws than in those that did. This paper proffers the hypothesis that protecting car occupants from the consequences of bad driving encourages bad driving. Also published as SAE Technical Report # 820819 (1982)