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The Safety Effectiveness of Light-Duty Motor Vehicle Occupant Restraints: Numbers of Occupant Lives Saved and Injuries Prevented By Seat Belts in Road Traffic Collisions in Canada, 1989-1995
Technical Paper
986126
Sector:
Language:
English
Abstract
The first Canadian "National Symposium on Road Safety"
was held in Montreal in 1988. The main purpose was to assess the
prevailing levels of safety for the various road users of
Canada''s roads and highways and identify issues and
related goals to pursue for realizing a safer national road
transportation system. One of the main recommendations was a
commitment to work towards increasing the usage rates of occupant
protection restraint systems (e.g., seat belts, child restraints).
The reaction to this major goal identified was swift and decisive.
A proposal~The National Occupant Restraint Program (NORP), was
prepared by the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators
(CCMTA) and presented to the federal and provincial ministers
responsible for road safety in September of 1989. The Council of
Ministers endorsed the program''s target objective of
attaining a "95 percent restraint usage rate by occupants of
light-duty motor vehicles by 1995."
Retrospective trend analyses or changes in seat belt usage rates
during the six years of NORP demonstrate that the goal was quite
realistic. Through National Seat Belt Use Surveys conducted
annually by Transport Canada (1996) it was possible to monitor and
assess improvements in occupant restraint usage. Two of the most
significant and encouraging results revealed that national seat
belt usage rates for drivers of passenger vehicles increased from
73.9% in 1989 to 91.6% in 1994~a percentage increase of about 24%
and very close to the 6-year target objective established by NORP,
and the usage rate for occupants of light-duty vehicles increased
from 68% to 87% during the same period resulting in a 28%
percentage increase.
The major issue that required addressing, however, was to
evaluate any safety impacts that can be attributed to the NORP
program. In particular, there is a need to know whether the
observed increases in seat belt usage rates over the program period
yielded significant benefits (i.e., reductions in fatalities and
injuries for collision-involved motor vehicle occupants), and if
so, to measure the extent and value of these benefits towards the
ultimate goal~improving road safety. These general objectives
formed the basis for the research study reported on in this
paper.