THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SEAT-BELT LEGISLATION IN REDUCING INJURY RATES IN TEXAS

The effects of seat-belt regulations on automobile-related fatality and injury rates have been of great interest to economists and policy-makers over the past few years.' The effects of the laws have been evaluated by various statistical techniques using timeseries data for particular states and pooled time-series data for national models.2 The results of these studies provide some evidence that seat-belt laws (SBL) reduce injury and fatality rates. However, the effects of seat-belt laws vary across states and time periods as well as across the levels of injuries. This study assesses the effects of the Texas seat-belt law on injury rates using policereported accident data. The data are from the U.S. Department of Transportation State Traffic Accident Files and are compiled monthly for the period 1982-1987 for driver-involved accidents. Furthermore, the data comprise singleand multiple-vehicle accidents. Only accidents involving towed vehicles are used in the analysis so as to normalize for changes in accident-reporting thresholds over time.3 The analysis was conducted for several sets of injury classifications using the KABCO scale, which indicates the numbers of fatalities (K), severe injuries (A), moderate injuries (B), complaints of injuries (C), and no injuries (0).