Driver Seat-Belt Use Climbs Above 75% in Medium-, Heavy-Duty Commercial Trucks
This story appears in the May 9 print edition of Transport Topics.
Seat-belt use among drivers of medium- and heavy-duty commercial motor vehicles rose in 2010 to 78%, up from 74% last year and the fourth annual increase in a row, according to a new Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration study.
Roughly 80% of commercial vehicle operators in states with primary seat-belt laws used their belts, while only 72% used their belts in states with secondary seat-belt laws.
CMV operators’ seat-belt use has increased by 14% since 2007, according to FMCSA.
Also, as seen in previous years, safety belt usage among drivers in units identified as part of a fleet had an 80% compliance rate, compared with a 71% rate for independent owner-operators.
A regional breakdown showed that seat-belt use among commercial drivers was highest in the West, at 82%, compared with 79% in the South, 73% in the Midwest and 69% in the Northeast.
“Today’s news is yet another reflection of the trucking industry’s commitment to safety,” American Trucking Associations President Bill Graves said in a statement last week. “However, while these numbers are encouraging, we acknowledge that there is still much more to do.”
The seat-belt use data were assembled from a national random sample of nearly 27,000 drivers.
Dave Osiecki, ATA’s senior vice president, attributed the rise in seat-belt use to a combination of factors.
“One is more primary seat-belt laws at the state level and another one is greater enforcement,” Osiecki told Transport Topics. “Also, there is greater education and awareness going on by government and industry and the Compliance, Safety and Accountability program plays a part because drivers see the ramifications of not complying.”
Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia have primary seat-belt laws that allow law enforcement to stop and ticket a driver for not wearing a seat belt, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association.
By comparison, 18 states have secondary seat-belt laws that allow police to ticket a driver for not wearing a seat belt, but only when there is another citable traffic infraction. New Hampshire only tickets motorists who are under 18 and not wearing a safety belt.
ATA’s safety agenda calls for other strategies to induce seat-belt use such as requiring that belts be of a sharply contrasting color to allow for easier enforcement, admissibility in court of evidence that a driver failed to wear a seat belt and denial of workers’ compensation claims for drivers who don’t wear seat belts.
“Overall truck crash and fatality rates, including the fatality rate for truck drivers, have plummeted in recent years,” Graves said. “While there are many factors contributing to these record-setting safety performance accomplishments, increasing seat-belt usage by drivers is certainly among them.”
Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, attributed the increase in seat-belt use to industry promotion efforts as well as an increasing awareness by drivers that they have a greater likelihood of surviving a crash if they’re wearing seat belts.
“The rest of the story on that is that survivability of crashes for truck cabs is far from where it ought to be,” Spencer told TT. “If you want drivers to totally embrace wearing their seat belts, then you need to be doing something to reassure them that the cab that they’re in isn’t going to be a tin can that crushes them.”
Indeed, in a 2005 study by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences, two of the top 10 reasons that drivers said they didn’t wear seat belts was they were worried they would be trapped in the vehicle and they didn’t think they were really safer with seat belts.
Those two reasons could explain in part why independent owner-operators use their seat belts less than fleet drivers, Spencer said.
“Or maybe they think this is an area where government has absolutely no business sticking its nose,” Spencer said.
