OBJECTIVES To describe the prevalence and correlates of safety belt and mobile phone usage in vehicles in the city of Barcelona (Spain). METHODS We performed a study using direct observation with a cross-sectional design. We selected 2,442 private cars, commercial vehicles, and taxis from all districts of Barcelona. RESULTS The prevalence of people not wearing safety belt was 10.5% among dr...

OBJECTIVES To assess the effect of the North Carolina law mandating that all front seat passengers use a safety belt on children 4 through 15 years of age. METHODS North Carolina collision reports, completed by local police or the state highway patrol for crashes with greater than $500 worth of damage, were analyzed using time series analysis on the monthly percentage of deaths and serious in...

Safety belt use, turn signal use, and intersection stopping were observed at 3 pizza delivery locations per driver's license plate numbers. After baseline observations, employees at 1 store participated in goal setting targeting complete stops. Employees at the other store were assigned a goal. Over 4 weeks, the group's percentages of complete intersection stopping were posted. Both interventio...

PROBLEM This manuscript evaluates the effects of enactment of state laws that required safety belt use in various U.S. states between 1986 and 2000. METHOD Safety belt use was assessed using nationally representative cross-sectional samples of high school seniors; evaluation of the effects of laws used data from over 2,000 high school seniors before and about 3,300 after the laws took effect ...

This paper investigates the effects of mandatory seat belt laws on driver behavior and traffic fatalities. Using a unique panel data set on seat belt usage in all U.S. jurisdictions, we analyze how such laws, by influencing seat belt use, affect the incidence of traffic fatalities. Allowing for the endogeneity of seat belt usage, we find that such usage decreases overall traffic fatalities. The...

BACKGROUND Motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of occupational fatalities in the United States in 2012, accounting for 25% of deaths. Truck drivers accounted for 46% of these deaths. This study estimates the prevalence of seat belt use and identifies factors associated with nonuse of seat belts among long-haul truck drivers (LHTDs), a group of workers at high risk for fatalities result...

OBJECTIVE The present study investigated the effect of a back belt on reach actions. SUBJECTS Sixteen undergraduate college students (8 male students, 8 female students) ranging in age from 18 to 22 years. Thirteen subjects were included in the final analysis. SETTING The Department of Psychology at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio METHODS Using a well-established set of procedures develope...

New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) test scores, measured by the United States Department of Transportation's (USDOT) National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), were analyzed in order to assess the benefits of equipping safety belt systems with pretensioners and load limiters. Safety belt pretensioners retract the safety belt almost instantly in a crash to remove excess slack. They t...