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II-1 SECTION II Introduction The AASHTO Strategic Highway Safety Plan identified 22 goals that need to be pursued to achieve a significant reduction in highway crash fatalities. The strategies are divided into three broad categories affecting drivers, vehicles, or the highway. User guides are planned to assist agencies with implementation. Strategy 8, which is located in the driver area, addresses the topic of occupant protection. This is a very broad topic that can include ⢠Increasing use of seatbelts and child passenger and booster seats ⢠Improving knowledge of airbag function ⢠Designing generally safer and more forgiving vehicle interiors This guide addresses means to increase the use of both seatbelts and child safety seats. For this emphasis area, the phrase âchild safety seatsâ includes all devices intended to protect younger passengers in vehicles, specifically including rear-facing infant carriers and booster seats. This area also is focused on the added objective of ensuring proper use of child safety seats according to the age and size of the child. While seatbelts were first made available in U.S.-built passenger vehicles in the mid-1950s, their installation did not become mandatory until 1964 (a requirement for shoulder belts was added in 1968 with the three-point restraint mandated in 1973). Even though the belts were required in the vehicles, there were at that time no laws requiring their use. As a result, seatbelt use in most areas languished at 10 percent or less. Usage did not increase significantly until the introduction of mandatory seatbelt use laws in the 1980s. Laws mandating the use of child safety seats followed a similar pattern. The devices were little known until the 1970s1 and were not widely used until laws mandating their use came into effect just ahead of seatbelt use laws. All states soon passed laws requiring the use of child safety seats. However, these laws were inconsistent in terms of what age or weight child must be restrained, what restraint type is appropriate for what size child, and applicability of the law when a nonparent was transporting the child. In addition, and largely unlike seatbelts, proper use of these devices is as important as their use generally. While it is possible to misuse a seatbelt, it is far easier to improperly secure a child into a safety seat and easier still to improperly secure the seat to the vehicle. When mandatory seatbelt use laws were enacted in most states, they usually differed from most other traffic laws in one specific aspect: a police officer could not stop a vehicle if the only visible violation was failure to use a seatbelt. The officer could take enforcement action only if unrestrained passengers were identified following a traffic stop for some other purpose. This type of law is generally referred to as âsecondary enforcement.â That is, the seatbelt law could only be enforced secondary to another traffic offense. The officer does not 1 Infant carriers were common by this time and were often used for transporting very young children in autos, but they were not designed to be locked into the vehicleâs occupant restraint system and offered virtually no crash protection to their occupants.
necessarily need to cite a driver (or occupant) for the initial violation, but that first violation must be documented to validate the secondary restraint violation. While these secondary enforcement laws have been successful in raising restraint use above 50 percent in most cases, permitting standard, or primary, enforcement for violations of the restraint laws has produced the highest use rates seen in the United States (and internationally). While laws have proved very helpful in increasing occupant restraint usage, the laws alone are not sufficient to increase use. The public must be made aware of the laws, and the public must have a reasonable expectation that the laws will be enforced. âIt would be impossible to overstate the lifesaving and dollar-saving impact of increases in safety belt use.â2 The single most effective strategy for improving occupant restraint use rates is enactment of standard enforcement laws in all states. NHTSA is working with the states to accomplish this. For this project, however, the focus is more on what can be accomplished by single agencies or local coalitions. Therefore, this guide will suggest strategies for increasing 1. Public awareness of occupant restraint laws and the value of using restraints 2. Enforcement levels of those laws SECTION IIâINTRODUCTION II-2 2 NHTSA Administrator Jeffrey W. Runge, M.D., in a November 17, 2003, news release (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2003a). Available online at http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/nhtsa/announce/press/pressdisplay.cfm?year=2003& filename=pr49-03.html.
