Seat Belt Legislation
HistoryThis section requires expansion.
The legal requirement to fit seat belts began in the Australian states of Victoria and South Australia in 1964, with the compulsory fitting of seat belt anchorages at front outboard positions in new cars. In 1965 cars built in Europe were required to be fitted with front seat belts. This was followed in 1967, by the requirement in the United Kingdom to fit three-point belts in the front outboard positions, and by the requirement in South Australia to fit belts (two- or three-point) to the front outboard positions, in all new cars.
Predicted and actual effects
The move towards seat belt wearing legislation started in Australia in the late 1960s. Following the success of these policies in reducing Australia's road toll, then among the world's highest relative to population, similar policies have been adopted elsewhere.
Experiments using both crash test dummies and human cadavers also indicated that wearing seat belts should lead to reduced risk of death and injury in certain types of car crash.
As a result of such predictions the use of seat belts by vehicle occupants was made compulsory in Victoria, Australia, in 1970, followed by the rest of Australia and some other countries during the 1970s and 1980s. The subsequent dramatic decline in road deaths, generally attributed to seat belt laws and subsequent road safety campaigns has saved thousands of lives in Australia alone..
Successive UK Governments proposed, but failed to deliver, seat belt wearing legislation throughout the 1970s. In one such attempt in 1979 similar claims for potential lives and injuries saved were advanced. William Rodgers, then Secretary of State for Transport in the Callaghan Labour Government (19761979), stated that: .
On the best available evidence of accidents in this country - evidence which has not been seriously contested - compulsion could save up to 1000 lives and 10,000 injuries a year.
These claims were disputed by Professor John Adams of University College London. His conclusion was that in the 18 countries surveyed, accounting for approximately 80% of the world's motoring, those countries with seat belt laws had fared no better, and in some cases (e.g. Sweden, Ireland and New Zealand) significantly worse than those without. Adams' conclusions were supported by an unpublished research project commissioned by the UK Department of Transport. .
Non-car road users
From the beginning in Australia, and subsequently New Zealand, there had been concerns that seat belt laws might increase deaths and injury among those outside cars, such as motorcyclists, cyclists and pedestrians. However, with the adoption of complementary policies, all categories of road deaths have declined dramatically, in Victoria to the lowest level since records have been kept.
The British law
On January 30, 2003, 20 years after the introduction of compulsory front seat belt wearing, the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS) published their Seat Belts Factsheet which states:
"Seat belts are a proven way of reducing the severity of injuries. The government has estimated that since seat belt wearing was made compulsory in 1983 it has reduced casualties by at least 370 deaths and 7000 serious injuries per year for front seat belts and 70 deaths and 1000 serious injuries for rear seat belts" (DETR 1997).
There was a reduction in driver fatalities and an increase in fatalities of rear passengers . A subsequent study of 19,000 cyclist and 72,000 pedestrian casualties at the time suggests that seat belt wearing drivers were 11-13% more likely to injure pedestrians and 7-8% more likely to injure cyclists . In January 1986 an editorial in The Lancet noted the shortfall in predicted life-saving and "the unexplained and worrying increase in deaths of other road users".
Support for seat belt legislation
Lives saved by safety belts and air bags, according to NHTSA, DOT
Other authorities claim that seat belt legislation has reduced the number of casualties in road accidents. For example, this statistical analysis by the NHTSA claimed that seat belts save over 10,000 lives every year in the US. The FARS further writes:
"Research on the effectiveness of child safety seats has found them to reduce fatal injury by 71% for infants less than 1 year old and by 54% for toddlers 1-4 years old in cars. [...] Among passenger vehicle occupants over 4 years old, safety belts saved an estimated 11,889 lives in 2000."
In Victoria, Australia the use of seat belts became compulsory in 1970. By 1974 decreases of 37% in deaths and 41% in injuries, including a decrease of 27% in spinal injuries, were observed, compared with extrapolations based on pre-law trends. The Victorian legislation coincided with the oil-crises of the early 1970s, a time when traffic injuries and deaths fell in most industrialised countries. Adams claimed that Victoria's injury trends were above the average for all industrialised countries.
By 2009, despite large increases in population and the number of vehicles, road deaths in Victoria had fallen below 300, less than a third of the 1970 level, the lowest since records were kept, and far below the per capita rate in jurisdictions such as the United States. This reduction was generally attributed to aggressive road safety campaigns beginning with the seat belt laws..
Current position
United States
Main article: Seat belt legislation in the United States
Seat belt laws are divided into two categories: primary and secondary. The law states that you must be wearing a seat belt when the vehicle is "in motion" that all passengers must wear their safety restraint at all times. As long as evry passenger has a belt on, no matter the number of passengers no law is broken. New York State passed the first seat belt law in the US in 1984 under the leadership of John D. States, an orthopedic surgeon who dedicated his career to improving automotive safety. In the USA, seatbelt legislation varies by state. Depending on which state you are in, not wearing a seatbelt in the front seat is either a primary offense or a secondary offense, with the exception of New Hampshire, which does not have a law requiring people over age 18 to wear a seat belt. In the front seat, the driver and each passenger must wear a seat belt, one person per belt. Though in states such as New York, New Hampshire, Michigan, etc (See article State Seat Belt Laws), seat belts in the rear seats are not mandatory for people over the age of 16, though it is extremely advised. The driver and front-seat passengers aged 16 or older can be fined up to $50 each for failure to buckle up. A primary offense means that a police officer can pull you over for the seatbelt law violation alone, and secondary offense that you can be punished for a seatbelt law violation only if you are already pulled over for another reason. By January 2007 25 states and the District of Columbia had primary seatbelt laws, 24 secondary seatbelt laws, and New Hampshire has no laws. Georgia presently exempts pickup trucks from its seat belt law.
Many opponents object on the grounds that seat belt laws infringe on their civil liberties. They believe not wearing seat belts is a victimless crime as the only person harmed is the one making that decision for himself about his own life. They also believe that since deaths are caused by seatbelts in some kinds of accidents that the government has no right to legislate an activity (buckling up) that may cause a person's death in the hopes it will maybe save others. Opponents quote Benjamin Franklin who said "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety".
The counterpoint to the libertarian view toward seatbelt laws is that mandatory usage not only reduces injuries and deaths but also reduces the economic cost to society. A University of Wisconsin study demonstrated that car accident victims who had not worn seatbelts cost the hospital (and the state in the case of the uninsured) on average 25% more.
Developing countries
In many developing countries, pedestrians, cyclists, rickshaw operators and moped users represent the majority of road users. Some believe such countries face a serious dilemma about importing "Western", "car-centered", models of road safety such as compulsory seat belt legislation. In the state of Gujarat in India, seat belts have been made compulsory in six major cities, Ahmedabad, Bhavnagar, Jamnagar, Rajkot, Surat and Vadodara.
In Malaysia, there are four stages pertaining to the legislation of safety belt laws. The first stage was implemented in 1979, making the wearing of seat belts compulsory for the driver and front seat passenger. On January 1, 2009, the second stage mandated the wearing of rear seat belts. Passenger vehicles registered prior to January 1, 1995 and those weighing more than 3.5 tons are exempted from this rule. The third and fourth stages, which will deal with baby and child seats and the number of passengers in a vehicle, have not taken effect.
Dilution of risk compensation effect
There is very little literature considering how risk compensation effects, subjective as they must be, change over time. Although there is good evidence that habitually unbelted drivers will take more risks when belted, and that habitually belted drivers will be more cautious when unbelted , by the nature of laws, new drivers will be habituated from the outset. An interesting footnote to the debate is analysis by Adams of the relationship between accident records and car ownership, a relationship known as Smeed's law). It appears that this empirical rule relating car casualties to the level of car ownership has continued to hold across several decades of safety interventions, including seat belt laws. Smeed's law postulates that modern drivers, habituated from the outset to seat belt use, are also habituated from the outside to greater expectations of car performance: faster cornering, faster acceleration, later braking. Alternatively it theorizes that improvements are due to the increasing profile of safety interventions as car ownership increases, whatever the country, as road safety professionals prefer.
Seat belt legislation around the world
This section requires expansion.
This section gives an overview of when seat belt legislation was first introduced in different countries. This includes both regional and national legislation.
Country
Compulsory wearing
Compulsory fitting
Source
Cars
Bus passengers
Cars
Buses
Driver
Front passengers
Rear passengers
Australia
1970
Belgium
1973 (outside cities), 1975 (post-1967 cars), 1979 (all)
1990
2003
1978
2003
The European Union
1993
France
1973 (outside cities), 1975 (cities at night), 1979 (all)
1990
2003
1979
Germany
1976
1984
1999
1970, 1979 (back seat)
1999
Hungary
1976
1993
Hong Kong
1983
1983
1996
1996 (back seat)
Ireland
1979
1992
Japan
2008
1969
Malaysia
1979
2009
Netherlands
1976
1992
1975 (front) 1990 (rear)
New Zealand
1972
1972 (15 years and over), 1979 (8 years and over)
1989
1972 (vehicles registered after 1965), 1975 (after 1955)
Singapore
1973
1973
1993
2008
1973
Spain
1975
Sweden
1975
1986
1969 (front) 1970 (rear)
2004
United Kingdom
1983
1991
RoSPA
United States
1935
1946
1970
- definitely introduced by this date, possibly earlier
See also
Seat belt
Car accident
Click It or Ticket
Clunk Click Every Trip
Road safety
Notes
^ a b "A Potted Seat Belt History". Drivers Technology. http://www.driverstechnology.co.uk/seatbelts.htm.
^ "Seat Belts: History". RoSPA. http://www.rospa.com/roadsafety/advice/motorvehicles/seatbelt_history.htm.
^ "RoSPA History - How Belting Up Became Law". RoSPA. http://www.rospa.org.uk/history/beltingup.htm.
^ "RoSPA History - How Belting Up Became Law" (PDF). john adams. http://john-adams.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/Seat belts for significance.pdf.
^ John Adams (1982) (PDF). The Efficacy of Seat Belt Legislation. The Society of Automotive Engineers. http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/~jadams/PDFs/SAE seatbelts.pdf.
^ Seat belt savings: wrong implications of European statistics. Isles JE, STG Division, Department of Transport, UK. Dated but not published April 1981. "The Isles Report"
^ Davis, R (1993). Death on the Streets: Cars and the Mythology of Road Safety. Leading Edge Books. ISBN 0-948135-46-8.
^ Evaluation of Automobile Safety Regulations: The case of Compulsory Seat Belt Legislation in Australia. by J.A.C. Coneybeare, Policy Sciences 12:27-39, 1980
^ Compulsory Seat Belt Use: Further Inferences, by P. Hurst Accident Analysis and Prevention., Vol 11: 27-33, 1979
^ Source: Department for Transport, Road Accidents Great Britain
^ "SEAT BELTS FACTSHEET - 20th ANNIVERSARY OF COMPULSORY FRONT SEAT BELT WEARING". UK Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety. 2003-01-30. http://www.pacts.org.uk/policy/briefings/seatbeltfactsheet.htm.
^ Durbin J, Harvey A: The effects of seat belt legislation on road casualties in Great Britain, DtP, October 1985
^ Source:Methodological Issues in Testing the Hypothesis of Risk Compensation by Brian Dulisse, Accident Analysis and Prevention Vol. 25 (5): 285-292, 1997
^ Lancet, 11 January 1986, p75
^ Click it or ticket
^ NTSB - Most Wanted
^ Jacoby, Jeff. Unbuckling the Voters. Boston Globe. August 25, 1994.
^ Seatbelt Laws Offend Notions of Freedom (Editorial). Greensboro News and Record, Page A10. June 28, 2003.
^ Seat-belt stops. Letters from readers. Minneapolis Star Tribune. February 9, 2001.
^ Road safety in less-motorized environments: future concerns Dinesh Mohan, International Journal of Epidemiology, Vol 31:527-532 2002
^ Seatbelt Legislation: Additional Information Shane Foran, British Medical Journal Rapid Responses, 9th January 2001
^ All must belt up in MPVs. The Star. Retrieved on 2009-1-1.
^ Janssen, W. Seat belt wearing and driving behaviour: An instrumented-vehicle study. Accident Analysis and Prevention.1994 Apr; Vol 26(2): 249-2
^ An experimental test of risk compensation: between-subject versus within-subject analyses Streff FM and Geller ES, Accident Analysis and Prevention, Aug;20(4):277-87. 1988
^ a b http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/~jadams/PDFs/smeed's law.pdf
External links
U.S. Department of Transportation: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration(NHTSA): Occupant Protection
PDF Seat Belt Wearing in Scotland: A Second Study of Compliance
UK Department for Transport: THINK! Road Safety
Prevention Institute: Seatbelts: Current Issues
Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 85, pp. 828-843, 2003
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