Evaluation of a County Enforcement Program With a Primary Seat Belt Ordinance: St. Louis County, Missouri
In March 2007, St. Louis County implemented a seat belt ordinance that allowed for traditional enforcement procedures. In order to increase usage on St. Louis County roads, particularly on roadways with fatal or disabling injury crashes, the St. Louis County Police Department conducted an intense high visibility enforcement (HVE) campaign along an 8-mile corridor on State Highway 21 in the southeastern part of the county. This corridor was selected in part because there had been at least 8 fatal or disabling injury crashes along this roadway in recent years. This campaign was characterized by a strong enforcement effort that was accompanied by only modest publicity in the form of roadway signage. Saturation patrols and enforcement zones resulted in about 1,000 citations issued over a two-week period. The results showed significant increases in all awareness indices and a 4.9 percentage point increase in belt use compared to the control corridor. Belt use increased as much among occupants of pickup trucks as passenger cars and increased the most for passengers, reaching nearly 90%. These data suggest that enactment and enforcement of a statewide primary enforcement law would likely result in a significant increase in statewide seat belt usage. If Missouri enacted a statewide primary law upgrade and implemented regular HVE programs, similar to the program implemented in St. Louis County, Missouri would save an estimated 30 to 70 lives, prevent 400 to 900 serious injuries, and save $110 million to $215 million in lower economic costs annually.
- Record URL:
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Corporate Authors:
Preusser Research Group, Incorporated
7100 Main Street
Trumbull, CT United States 06611National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Office of Behavioral Safety Research, 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
Washington, DC United States 20590 -
Authors:
- Nichols, J L
- Solomon, M G
- Chaffe, R H B
- Preusser, D F
- Publication Date: 2010-5
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Print
- Edition: Final Report
- Features: Appendices; Figures; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 52p
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Countermeasures; Highway safety; Laws; Seat belts; Traffic law enforcement; Utilization
- Uncontrolled Terms: Primary law enforcement
- Subject Areas: Highways; Law; Safety and Human Factors; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01164236
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: HS-811 292
- Contract Numbers: DTNH22-05-D-15043
- Files: HSL, TRIS, USDOT
- Created Date: Jul 29 2010 9:24AM