IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aph/ajpbhl/10.2105-ajph.2005.074385_2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Safety belt use and the switch to primary enforcement, 1991-2003

Author

Listed:
  • Houston, D.J.
  • Richardson Jr., L.E.

Abstract

State seat belt laws have increased use rates and have reduced traffic fatalities, but tremendous variation exists in the laws. New Hampshire does not have a law, and 30 states have only secondary enforcement laws. Whereas primary enforcement allows an officer to issue a citation for any infraction, secondary enforcement permits a citation only if a motorist is stopped for another infraction first. We performed a cross-sectional time-series analysis of the impact of upgrading to primary enforcement on belt use rates for 47 states and the District of Columbia from 1991 to 2003. Our results suggest that states with secondary enforcement laws could increase belt use by 10 percentage points and improve public safety considerably by upgrading to primary enforcement.

Suggested Citation

  • Houston, D.J. & Richardson Jr., L.E., 2006. "Safety belt use and the switch to primary enforcement, 1991-2003," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 96(11), pages 1949-1954.
    • Handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.2005.074385_2
    DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2005.074385
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2105/AJPH.2005.074385
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2105/AJPH.2005.074385?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.2005.074385_2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.apha.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.