September 17, 2008

Incredibly it’s seventeen years since it became compulsory to wear seat belts in the back seat of a car driven on the UK roads.  Many adults are still not in the habit of belting up in the back, although many adults will haven’t travelled in the back seat very often since wearing seatbelts was compulsory and may well not make the association. 

The government are looking at non wearing of seatbelts as their latest was of filling budget black holes through fining car drivers and passengers.  It is reported that the government is currently consulting on raising the fixed penalty for non compliance with seatbelt rules from £30 to £60. 

A recent survey revealed that 94% of drivers and almost as many front seat passengers (93%), wear seat belts.  However 30% of adults sitting in the back of a car don’t wear their seat belt. 

Home office minister Vernon Coaker commented:  “The vast majority of motorists wear seatbelts but some drivers and passengers still choose not to, even though wearing a belt is a key factor in avoiding death or injury in a car crash”.  Legislation making the wearing of seatbelts in the front seats of UK cars came into force on 31st January 1983. 

Before the law came into force a study was made by Professor John Adams of University College London.  Adams concluded that the compulsion to wear seatbelts would have no discernable benefit to the UK’s motoring population.  Studies made across countries that covered 80% of the world’s drivers found that countries where seatbelts were mandatory fared little better than those that didn’t. 

He commented that “The evidence that the use of a seat belt improves a car occupant’s chances of surviving a crash is convincing. That a person travelling at speed inside a hard metal shell will stand a better chance of surviving a crash if he is restrained from rattling about inside the shell is both intuitively obvious and supported by an impressive body of empirical evidence”, but that the wearing of seat belts makes drivers more careless and likely to take risks; protecting drivers from the affects of bad driving encourages bad driving.  Subsequent analysis has shown that seatbelt wearing drivers are 11 – 13% more likely to cause injury to pedestrians and 7-8%more likely to injure cyclists.

In January 1986 an editorial piece in medical journal ‘The Lancet’ noted the shortfall in predicted life-saving and "the unexplained and worrying increase in deaths of other road users".  Five years later legislation ensured that drivers felt even safer in their cars by ensuring that all passengers were belted in place.

The attempts to double the cost of a fine for not wearing a seat belt looks like nothing but another cynical attempt to raise funds from the already belegeured motorists.

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