Safety Belt Use Estimate for Native American Tribal Reservations

Abstract

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), Indian Highway Safety Program, sponsored a project to (a) establish the first baseline tribal reservation safety belt use rate, and (b) develop a methodology to use in the future to track trends and specific program effects. The planned sample included 18 reservations with 150 sites on these reservations. However, the Navajo reservation in the Southwest, which has 22% of the total Native American population, did not permit safety belt observations to be made in its territory. Ultimately, data were collected from 120 sites on 16 tribal reservations. Safety belt use was observed between September and November 2004 on 15 reservations and in February 2005 on one reservation. Overall, 44% of the vehicles were cars, 31% were pickups, 14% were SUVs, and 10% were vans. Fifty-eight percent of the drivers were male, 38% were female and the sex of 3% could not be determined. Fifty-three percent of the passengers were female, 37% were male, and the sex of 10% of the passengers could not be determined. Belt use could be coded for 90% of the drivers and 83% of the passengers. For the tribal reservations subject to tribal law and tribal traffic law enforcement, excluding the Navajo, the overall safety belt use rate was 55.4%. There was a very high variation in belt use across reservations, ranging from a low of 8.8% to a high of 84.8%. Nine tribal reservations had primary safety belt laws; in them, 68.6% of vehicle occupants were belted. By comparison, three tribal reservations had secondary belt laws; they averaged 53.2% belt use. For the four tribal reservations with no belt use law of any kind, only 26.4% of the vehicle occupants were belted. NHTSA is funding two initiatives to raise reservation belt use: a Law Enforcement Liaison to promote emphasis on belt law enforcement and a demonstration program to develop strategies for grant solicitations for occupant protection programs on Native American Tribal Reservations. The methodology developed here will be crucial in evaluating improvements due to these and other initiatives.