New Seat Belt Law

There is a new seat belt law in every state it seems like now. And according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, choosing to wear a seat belt can reduce the chances by half of that persons risk of death or serious injury during accident. In fact, NHSTA emphasized that more than five thousand people could have be saved from death during a vehicular accident if the US could achieve even as much as 85% of of the people to where seat belts when traveling in a car, which is why you will see new seat belt laws in every state you go to ” CLICK or TICKET ” This is the reason why there are many who support the new seat belt laws and for increasing the penalty for not wearing a seat belt.

Some states have a severe penalty for not wearing your seat belt and statistically compared to those which have lighter penalties, theses states have higher percentage of people wearing their seat belt. However, there are contradictory facts and findings regarding the connection between treating new seat belt laws as primary offense and actual safety and reduction of fatalities. The states that have made it primary offense failed to show evidence of reduced fatalities and injuries. In fact, in experiments using five horsepower go-carts without and with seat belts, it was found that drivers without seat belts drove slower than those wearing a seat belt. Of course this is not proof that the same drivers drive the same on roads as they do on the race track. In another experiment, subjects who admitted to not wearing seat belts as often as they should were asked to drive on public roads wearing seat belts. After evaluation, the results showed that when wearing seat belts, they drove faster, braked later and followed more closely. Coincidence ?? 

On the other side of the debate, some argue that making new seat belt laws a primary offense will have little significance on injuries and fatalities. This is because people will wear or not wear seat belts regardless of the law and that the significant factor from on the road accident fatalities and injuries are the high or low risk of a particular state. For instance, although New York passed the new seat belt law as primary offense in 1984, data showed that in 1996, it enjoyed 74% usage but also had 46% fatalities of those wearing seat belts.

Many argue then that road fatalities and injury are caused by many factors and the use of a seat belt is just one of them. Some of the more important factors, according to many are the age of the population in a state, the road conditions, the speed habit of the population, the drinking habit of the population and others.

DONT FORGET TO WEAR YOURE SEAT BELT . . . THEY ARE WATCHING LOL ! have a good day !