Estimating the Effect of Standard Enforcement of a Rear Seat Belt Law for Rear Seat Fatality Prevention

Abstract

Data were collected from the NHTSA’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System to analyze the link between primary enforcement of rear seat belt use and injury severity in fatal vehicle collisions. Specifically, this study predicted the amount of fatalities that may have been prevented had there been standard enforcement of a rear seat belt law in effect. Previous literature concludes that increasing seat belt use will decrease injury severity in collisions and the primary enforcement of seat belts laws will increase seat belt use by approximately 14%. This study recorded and compared the number of rear seat fatalities in states that did and did not have primary enforcement laws for rear seat occupants. The results indicated that, on average, for every properly restrained rear seat fatality there are 0.45 more rear seat fatalities in states without primary enforcement than states with primary enforcement. It also predicts that the states that do not practice standard seat belt enforcement could have seen approximately 772 to 1,032 fatalities prevented from 2011 to 2015, had there been primary rear seat belt enforcement. This corresponds to an estimated national crash cost savings of $8.6 billion, or $1.7 billion annually.