Celebrating Seat Belt Safety In North Carolina

Governor Roy Cooper has proclaimed May as Seat Belt Safety Awareness Month. Since the nation's first seat belt law was passed fifty years ago, the record is clear: the more people use their seat belts, the less likely they are to be seriously injured or killed in a crash. Nationally, since their peak in the late 1960s, the number of traffic fatalities has been roughly cut in half.

In North Carolina, seat belt use is the highest in the Southeast at roughly 90 percent. Last year, the number of unrestrained traffic fatalities decreased slightly, while serious injuries rose by nearly 300.

The Governors Highway Safety Program funds dozens of seatbelt initiatives throughout the year, including passenger education classes, making child safety seats more accessible and training parents on how to install them securely.

Director Mark Ezzell spoke with WFDD's David Ford by phone from his office in Raleigh.   

Interview Highlights

On how North Carolina's seat belt use compares with the rest of the country:

We've got a relatively high seatbelt use rate; 91.4 percent of North Carolinians use their seatbelts. But you've still got that nagging percentage of a little over 9 percent that don't, and that's dangerous. That's dangerous for everybody. We are the highest rate in the southeast. However, there are other states that are higher than us. Our hope is to get eventually to 100 percent usage but certainly to get to 94 percent fairly soon. There are other states out in the northwest where it's very high, it's around that 94 percentage. So, we've still got some work to do.

On misconceptions out there with regard to seat belt use:

A lot of passengers mistakenly believe that they're safer in the rear seat and that they don't need to wear a seatbelt when they are in the rear seat. That is untrue. We know from studies and statistics, and from personal experience that when you are unbelted in the back seat and in a crash, you become a projectile that then flies up toward the front, and that can be exceedingly dangerous. So, one of the things we really need to do is encourage people in the back seat to buckle up. And the law requires that. However, we do need to strengthen the law because the law presently doesn't allow for an officer to stop someone just for someone in the back seat being unbuckled. In other words, it's not a primary enforcement for rear seat riders. It is for those in the front but not in the back. So, we need to change that.

On the potential danger that unrestrained backseat passengers pose to those in the front seat:

You can actually see videos that have been done with the crash test dummies from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. When a crash occurs and the folks in the front seat are belted and the folks in the back seat are not, then you can see those folks in the back seat becoming projectiles crashing their head on the roof and then coming in and crumpling the front seat driver from the back. So, that seat that a front seat driver is in will then crumple potentially, and harm those front seat drivers even when the front seat driver is buckled. So, in these days with Uber and Lyft and taxis so many people forget to do that, but it's vitally important.