TP 13563 E

Road Safety Programs
Road Safety & Motor Vehicle Regulation
Transport Canada
June 1999

Objective

The objective of this study was to establish a "profile" of fatally and seriously injured "unbelted drivers", with particular emphasis on collisions that occurred in rural areas and those involving elderly drivers. The establishment of information on the collision characteristics of unbelted drivers should provide road safety program and policy makers as well as enforcement agencies with a better focus with which to channel their intervention efforts.

Highlights

• During the 1993-1997 period, 39.7% of fatally injured drivers and 17.9% of those seriously injured (hospitalized for a period of at least 24 hours), were unbelted. These percentages accounted for a yearly average of 643 drivers killed and 1,819 seriously injured.
• Unbelted drivers, both those killed and seriously injured, are over-represented among the younger age groups - particularly those in the 16-19 and 20-24 year old age categories - when compared with distributions of similarly aged licensed drivers.
• The unbelted fatally injured driver phenomenon is equally prevalent in both urban and rural areas. Although the number of drivers killed in rural areas outnumbered those that died in crashes in urban areas by a ratio of four to one, the percentage of fatally injured drivers that were unbelted at the time of crash occurrence was virtually identical in both areas - 40.8% in urban areas and 41.2% in rural areas.
• Non-use of seat belts was highest among fatally and seriously injured drivers involved in single-vehicle incidents - 54.4% for drivers killed in single-vehicle crashes in urban areas and 60.2% for those killed in collisions in rural areas.
• Almost half (48.8%) of unbelted drivers that died in crashes were ejected from their vehicles.
• Non-use of seat belts and alcohol involvement were most prevalent among drivers killed in single-vehicle collisions in rural areas. These same crash characteristics were found among drivers seriously injured in single vehicle crashes in urban areas.
• Almost three of four unbelted drivers killed or seriously injured (73.0% and 71.7%, respectively) in night-time collisions had been drinking or were impaired.
• Non-use of seat belts was more prevalent among motor vehicle passengers than among drivers. During the 1993-1997 period, a yearly average of 41.3% of passengers killed and 25.4% of those injured were unbelted at the time of collision occurrence.
• When combining both driver and passenger fatalities, 40.2% of all occupants killed and 20.8% of those seriously injured were unbelted; this is an annual average of 998 occupants killed and 3,418 seriously injured during the 1993-1997 period.
• Non-use of seat belts among fatally (24.0%) and seriously (11.4%) injured elderly drivers (those aged 65 years or older), were higher than the national non-use rate for all drivers (9.0%), but lower than the unbelted wearing rates among all other age groups of fatally and seriously injured drivers.
• Despite large annual numbers of unbelted drivers killed and seriously injured, improvements have occurred during the 1993-1997 period. The percentage of fatally injured drivers who were unbelted gradually decreased from 43.1% in 1993 to 37.3% in 1997 and from 20% to 16.5% among seriously injured drivers.