Teens Need Guidance On Seat Belts
Teens take
chances -- everyone knows it -- but many do so even while riding with adults.
A recent study
of seat belt use by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found nearly
half of teenagers ride around unbelted even when an adult is present in
the vehicle.
The Arlington,
Va.-based insurance industry group, which also conducts automobile crash
tests, Wednesday said when adults dropped off teens at school in the morning,
46 percent of the kids were not buckled up. Neither the teen nor the adult
wore belts in 23 percent of the arriving vehicles.
Institute chief
scientist Allan Williams looked at belt usage at a dozen high schools in
Connecticut and Massachusetts and said it's possible seat belt use by teens
might drop off even more in recreational settings, especially when parties
and alcohol are part of the equation.
Observers focused
on teen drivers, teen passengers in vehicles driven by teen drivers, teens
riding as passengers with adult drivers and the adult drivers themselves.
Females were
more likely to buckle up regardless of who was driving -- 71 percent of
adult women compared to 63 percent of adult men used seat belts. In vehicles
with an adult behind the wheel and a teen passenger, 56 percent of females
were belted compared with 50 percent of men.
When the driver
was a teen, 70 percent of females wore belts and 54 percent of males and
when the driver and passenger both were teens, 52 percent of females and
42 percent of males were belted.
In nearly a
quarter of the survey results, the adult wore their seat belt while the
teenager was unbelted and in 8 percent of the cases it was the opposite
-- the teen was belted while the accompanying adult wasn't.
The National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration said 4,216 teens, ages 16-19, died
in auto crashes in 2000.
"Teens and
young adults are killed at far higher rates in crashes because they are
caught in a lethal intersection of inexperience, risk taking and low seat
belt use," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta.
More than 11,000
law enforcement agencies in all 50 states are conducting safety checks
and monitoring traffic over the Memorial Day holiday as part of Operation
ABC, or America Buckles Up Children. Overall seat belt use has improved
from 69 percent in 1998 to 73 percent last year.
In Illinois,
700 law enforcement agencies have adopted a zero-tolerance policy for seat
belt use under the "Click it or ticket" campaign, and will issue citations
to all violators.
"Illinois law
requires everyone to be buckled up when the driver is under 18," said John
Pastovic, spokesman for Community Safety Initiatives. "Half of all teens
killed in accidents would be alive today if they had used seat belts."
The risk of
crashes for teen drivers is four times that of older drivers and 56 percent
of all children under 15 killed in auto accidents were completely unrestrained,
according to NHTSA.
Surprisingly,
the insurance group's study found male teenage drivers were the only group
that used belts less driving to a game than arriving for school in the
morning.
A third of
teens were simply inconsistent. Some who buckled up on the drive to school
in the morning skipped the seat belt at games, while for others the behavior
was exactly the opposite.
Some states
such as North Carolina have added seat belt provisions to graduated licensing
systems to boost seat belt use among teens -- fining teens up to $100 for
belt violations compared to $25 for adults not using seat belts.
"If the states
publicize and enforce such penalties, it could make a difference," Williams
said.
--
Copyright 2002 by United
Press International.
All rights reserved.
--
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