A new survey finds that fewer than 20 percent of rear seat passengers fasten their safety belts. Even passengers who regularly wear a seatbelt as a driver or front passenger don’t buckle up in the back seat. While interesting, those stats differ from previously published reports.
The survey was conducted by LeaseTrader, purveyor of leasable cars and factoids destined for morning radio. In states where rear passengers are obligated by law to buckle up, surveyors found that men wore seatbelts 14.3 percent of the time and women wore then 18.4 percent of the time. In states with no rear passenger seatbelt law, men buckled up only 9.6 percent of the time, while women did 16.3 percent of the time.
The most commonly used excuses for not buckling up included forgetting to use the belt, cited by 63.2 percent of respondees, while others said they didn’t feel a buckled belt was necessary, didn’t know there was a seatbelt law or felt safe without one.
Shocking numbers, indeed, but completely opposite from the conclusion of a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) study. Yes, says NHTSA, fewer passengers buckle up in the backseat than when they’re driving or a front passenger. However, in 2009 NHTSA observed that 78 percent of passengers wore belts in the backseat in states where it was the law, while 64 percent wore a belt in states where it was not.
A 200-level statistics course could have a field day discussing the differences between the two studies, as their methodology couldn’t be more different: LeaseTrader polled 1,000 adults who said they’d sat in the rear seat more than 25 times in the past year, and the results are based on self-reported data. Perhaps all those adults rode in the backs of cabs where the belts were tucked under the cushions, or only remembered the times they rode beltless.
NHTSA, on the other hand, relies on data from observers posted at intersections. If anything, NHTSA notes, their data should underreport the true rate of rear seatbelt use because they only count passengers wearing shoulder belts and, in multiple-row vehicles, only count passengers in the first rear row.
So, do passengers buckle up in the back? Let us know — vote below:
poll by twiigs.comPhoto: Flickr/bengoodger
