Better than eight of 10 drivers and passengers buckled up in 2005, a record high for U.S. seat belt use, transportation officials said Friday.

 

The compliance rate, at 82 percent, helped highway fatalities drop to the lowest rate since record keeping began 30 years ago, U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said. He estimated that seat belts annually save nearly 16,000 lives, prevent hundreds of thousands of injuries and save the economy $67 billion a year. A decade ago, just six in 10 drivers wore seat belts.

 

"The fact that safety belts save lives is starting to click with the American people," Mineta told a Mothers Against Drunk Driving convention in Washington, where he announced the latest figures. Drunken-driving fatalities also fell for the second consecutive year, he said.

 

In 2004, more than 42,000 Americans died of injuries related to traffic accidents.

 

Seat belt compliance was highest in the 21 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico that have passed laws permitting police to pull drivers over simply for not wearing a seat belt, Mineta said. In 28 other states, police enforce seat belt laws only after pulling drivers over for other offenses. New Hampshire requires only that minors wear seat belts or other restraints.

 

The recently passed federal transportation bill includes $500 million in cash incentives to states to pass tougher seat belt laws and/or to attain compliance rates of 85 percent or higher.

 

The National Occupant Protection Use Survey's findings are based on observations of about 400,000 motorists in the summers of 2004 and 2005.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3377378

good news...though i'm curious as to how they'd measure such a stat.

good to hear, hate to see people get hurt because of ignorance.

No one in my family pulls out of the driveway without buckling up.

 

 

Just makes good sense.

That's great to hear. I have been buckling as of late.

If I didn't have a seatbelt last year when I was in an accident, I wouldn't have walked away without a scrath. I'll always buckle up, especially in South Florida.

Its always good to buckle up, but there's always the freak accident where not buckling up saves your life. A friend of mine was passenger when the driver spun out over a median and he was thrown out of the car (twisting his leg which stayed stuck) and his side of the car struck a tree (could've had worse injuries had he stayed in the seat).

What the hell's the matter with the other 18%?

good news...though i'm curious as to how they'd measure such a stat.

 

 

Eggsackly. I buckle up about 70% of the time. The other 30% I'm eating food or in too much of a rush and forget about it.

 

The only reason TO buckle up is so you don't get some b.s. ticket for NOT buckling up. If someone doesn't want to, they shouldn't have to. Just because it's safer isn't any reason because then we have a reason to make alchohol illegal.

What the hell's the matter with the other 18%?

 

Probably people that "know a guy, that knows a guy that survived a car crash because the seatbelt snapped and he was ejected from the car into the back of a pickup truck loaded with pillows".

 

Then again, if people want to put their own lives in their hands, so be it. It's stupid, but it's not my place to judge.

It's just mindless to me.

 

 

I know people say the same thing about smoking cigarettes, but not wearing a seat belt isn't addictive.

Most of the time I put on my seatbelt without even thinking. The other times I do it consciously. The only times I don't are when I get home to my townhouse complex and get out to get the mail and I don't wear it from the mailbox to the house. It's seriously stupid not to put it on.

wear your seatbelts people ........ it's easy and safe .. no reason not to

 

since we are all required to have insurance, please help keep my costs down and your life safe

 

thanks

I always wear my seatbelt, even if I am sitting in the backseat.