SAFETY BELT EFFECTIVENESS IN PREVENTING DRIVER FATALITIES VERSUS A NUMBER OF VEHICULAR, ACCIDENT, ROADWAY, AND ENVIRONMENTAL-FACTORS

Safety belt effectiveness in preventing fatalities to drivers is examined versus a number of factors (vehicle, accident, and environmental) by applying the double-pair comparison method to appropriate subsets of the Fatal Accident Reporting System (FARS) data. For each of 13 factors studied, safety belt effectiveness (the percent of fatally injured unbelted drivers who would not have been killed if they had been wearing safety belts) is estimated, as is an associated standard error of the estimate. The results, which are presented graphically, provide no evidence that safety belt effectiveness is systematically influenced by most of the factors investigated, including car mass and model year.