Think About The Consequences Buckle Up Arkansas

Your seat belt is crucial to surviving a crash. Make the lifesaving choice to buckle up every trip. In 2019, nearly half of passenger vehicle occupants who died in crashes were unrestrained. That’s worth repeating. So, let’s say it another way of the 22,215 passenger vehicle occupants killed in 2019, 47% were not wearing seat belts.

From 1975 through 2017, seat belts saved an estimated 374,276 lives.

The consequences of not wearing, or improperly wearing, a seat belt are clear:

1. Buckling up helps keep you safe and secure inside your vehicle, whereas not buckling up can result in being totally ejected from the vehicle in a crash, which is almost always deadly.

2. Air bags are not enough to protect you; in fact, the force of an air bag can seriously injure or even kill you if you’re not buckled up. Seat belts make air bags more effective.

3. Improperly wearing a seat belt puts you and your passengers at risk. Putting the strap below your arm is an improper use of the seat belt and puts you at risk in a crash.

The benefits of buckling up are equally clear:

  1. If you buckle up in the front seat of a passenger car, you can reduce your risk of:
    • Fatal injury by 45% (Kahane, 2015)
    • Moderate to critical injury by 50%
  2. If you buckle up in a light truck, you can reduce your risk of:
    • Fatal injury by 60% (Kahane, 2015)
    • Moderate to critical injury by 65% (NHTSA, 1984)
  3. If your passengers in the back seat buckle-up you reduce the risk of being harmed by them in a crash. Unbuckled back-seat passengers in a crash can become projectiles endangering or killing others in the car, especially the driver.

Find out when your child is ready to use an adult seat belt and learn about seat belt safety when you’re pregnant.

To read more about what AHSO is doing to make Arkansas roads safer in the area of Occupant Protection, click here or visit Click It or Ticket page.

Source: NHTSA

Arkansas State Police Highway Safety Office | 1 Arkansas State Police Plaza Drive, Little Rock, AR 72209