Presence of Additional Safety Belt Enforcement Increases Safety Belt Use by Drivers

Abstract

The use of a safety belt is universally recognized as a primary means of reducing injuries and fatalities for motor vehicle occupants. There are several factors that contribute to safety belt utilization, including traffic enforcement, demographics, vehicle type, day of the week, and geographical location. These factors have been explored and found significant in relation to safety belt usage. Apart from these factors, the presence of additional traffic enforcement is generally believed to produce higher rates of safety belt use. However, the impacts provided by the presence/no-presence of additional traffic enforcement have been merely quantified on a disaggregated scale, broadly across an entire state while controlling for other influential factors. Thus, this paper presents an analysis that quantifies the impacts provided by the presence of additional safety belt enforcement on driver safety belt usage. Direct safety belt use observational surveys and traffic enforcement data were used for the analysis. Owing to the nature of the data, a binary logistic regression analysis was performed on the dataset from the state of Michigan. The results showed that for every location where additional traffic enforcement was present, safety belt usage increased by 6.4% per county compared with areas where no additional traffic enforcement was present. Finally, the results not only quantified the impact of traffic enforcement on safety belt use, but could help transportation safety agencies make more informed decisions about where additional safety belt enforcement may be needed to improve rates of safety belt use.