For whom didn’t it click? A study of the non-use of seat belts in motor vehicle fatalities in New Zealand

Abstract

There is an increased risk of death or serious injury for occupants who did not wear a seat belt in a crash. In New Zealand, between 2006 and 2016, the non-use of seat belts accounted for 19-30% of the overall motor vehicle road deaths, and this figure shows no sign of decreasing. It is important to better understand the contextual factors associated with crashes where seat belts are not worn, so that more relevant and effective road safety interventions can be designed and implemented. The aim of this research was to determine the profiles for seat belt non-users who were killed in motor vehicle crashes in New Zealand between 2011 and 2015. An in-depth analysis of 200 fatalities where seat belts were not worn (186 crash cases) was carried out following a Safe System framework, using NZ Police reports. Following this, a Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) developed five profiles of vehicle occupants who were killed in crashes where seat belts were not worn. While the stereotypical ‘young risky’ males were an important group, a range of other people and contexts emerged: ‘driving for work’; ‘elderly and retired’; ‘overseas passengers’; and ‘people driving in rural settings’. This has implications for tailored road safety interventions, as a variety of motivations and influences are likely to be at play, depending on the people involved.

Driving for Work Crashes: A Systems Analysis

“…The 300 crash cases identified were then coded using a Safe System analysis coding framework. The coding framework was a modified version of coding frameworks used in previous Safe System analyses, in particular the Serious Injury Crashes study previously undertaken by several members of the research team (Hirsch et al, 2017(Hirsch et al, , 2018Mackie et al, 2017;Thorne et al, 2020). The most substantial modification to the framework entailed splitting the User pillar into two sub-pillars, DFW Users, and Other Users, in order to differentiate crash factors related to the primary driver for work from those of Other Users involved in the crashes (i.e., to explore 'exposure' factors as well as those directly relating to driver).…”

“…One method for better understanding the context of, and factors involved in, crashes is to analyse crash records from a Safe System perspective. Safe System analysis frameworks have proven useful in determining factors associated with casualties and crashes (Hirsch et al, 2017(Hirsch et al, , 2018Thorne et al, 2020).…”

“…It enables patterns of factors associated with specific types of crashes to be identified. For example, Safe System studies have shown that higher severity crashes are more likely to involve multiple system failures, and fatal crashes were more likely to involve extreme behaviours compared to serious injury crashes (Hirsch et al, 2017).…”