Seat Belt Use on North Dakota Rural Roads: 2015

With the understanding that seat belts are a relatively low-cost safety device and are an easy primary protection for occupants in passenger vehicles, North Dakota has chosen to continue to measure seat belt use on non-interstate rural roads. Understanding tendencies and trends in seat belt use on these rural roads is essential to making wise decisions with regard to efforts to encourage seat belt use in the state. The U.S. Department of Transportation does work with states to measure seat belt use through the long-standing annual National Occupant Protection Use Survey (NOPUS). Results from this survey supplement to NOPUS statewide estimate which also includes urban and interstate travel which are heavily weighted in the final seat belt use estimate. A total of 6,145 driver observations were collected at 142 sites across 24 rural counties. Highway seat belt use decreased from 71.7% in 2014 to 67.2% in 2015. The survey has measured an 8.0 percentage point increase in rural highway seat belt use comparing average use between 2013 and 2015 to the previous three-year average. Similar to previous findings, seat belt use was found to be significantly different on rural highways and in rural towns. Average observed highway use rates ranged from 55.7% to 82.0% on rural highways in individual counties and from 22.2% to 63.9% in rural towns between 2013 and 2015.

• Record URL:
  https://www.ugpti.org/resources/reports/details.php?id=820
• 
• Corporate Authors:

  Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute

  North Dakota State University
  1320 Albrecht Boulevard
  Fargo, ND  United States  581052
• Authors:
  • Vachal, Kimberly
  • Benson, Laurel
• Publication Date: 2015-9

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Appendices; Figures; Maps; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 33p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Highway safety; Rural areas; Seat belt use; Trend (Statistics)
• Geographic Terms: North Dakota
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01577523
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: DP-285
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Sep 30 2015 9:07AM