Occupant restraints and traffic crash loss reduction

Automobile seat belts, child restraints, and motorcycle helmets have the demonstrated potential to prevent fatalities, reduce the severity of injuries, and reduce overall losses associated with traffic crashes. Modern restraints are inexpensive, widely available, and minimally inconvenient to the user, yet in spite of these attributes, most American travelers fail to take advantage of them. This is especially true with respect to seat belts and child restraints in passenger cars, where usage rates have consistently remained below 20 percent. Many nations have responded to the problem of nonuse of restraints by enacting laws requiring their use. Belt-use laws, which are common in Europe, Canada, and Australia, have not, so far, been politically feasible in the United States. Nevertheless, policymakers in both the public and private sectors have at their disposal a wide range of strategies other than comprehensive, mandatory belt-use laws. Legislation requiring certain classes of operators or occupants, especially motorcyclists and small children, to use restraints, enjoys popular acceptability. Regulations requiring restraint use while performing governmental business, and similar on-the-job regulations in private industry, are increasingly common. Information and education programs, directed at the general public and at such intermediate audiences as employers, physicians, and schoolteachers, may increase restraint use over a long period of time. Economic incentives for individuals who use restraints, or for those who actively promote restraint use by others, may lead to increased usage. This paper presents some promising alternatives to mandatory belt-use legislation that can be implemented in the immediate future to reduce traffic crash losses.