Press Coverage

by Jayne O'Donnell
USA TODAY

Seat-belt usage rates might not be as high as the government says. And that might help explain why deaths have gone up as seat-belt use rates have climbed.

Barbara Harsha, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association, says a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration policy inflates the belt-use numbers and might make the device appear less effective as death numbers increase.

Last year, NHTSA insisted that states calculate belt use either in late May or November just as advertising and enforcement campaigns ended. NHTSA noted in a report on its enforcement campaigns last September that increases in rates "usually diminish immediately after ending stepped-up enforcement."

This year, the states are being told to do the surveys as soon as this month's seat-belt campaign ends. NHTSA spokesman Tim Hurd says the agency has asked for the surveys to be done immediately before and after this year's campaign because it wants to determine how effective the message is. The agency also conducts a national sampling right after the May campaign.

State highway officials are concerned they won't be able to maintain the high numbers calculated in post-campaign periods. In West Virginia, belt use officially jumped from the USA's lowest — 52% — in 2001 to 72% in '02. But motor vehicles chief Roger Pritt says that when the ad campaign stopped last fall, usage started dropping because people stopped thinking about it.

State officials also say an inflated number in the face of more highway deaths makes it more difficult to sell the effectiveness of seat belts. Last year, more people died in car crashes than in any year since 1990, despite a record 75% belt-usage rate.

Kathy Swanson, chairwoman of the Governors Highway Safety Association, says that her home state of Minnesota is hitting record levels of belt usage and deaths at the same time. Belt usage has grown from 74% in 2001 to 80% in 2002, yet the state had the highest number of fatalities — 652 — in 20 years. "It's hard to explain to people," Swanson says.

Hurd says many factors, including weather and drunken driving, can affect a state's fatality rate. He says the agency recently refined how it estimates seat-belt effectiveness to consider changes such as the age and type of vehicles on the road today and is confident in the data.