Fewer Nevada drivers buckling up, survey shows
CARSON CITY – Despite the state’s heavily publicized Click It or Ticket campaign, fewer drivers buckled up in the 2012 survey of seat belt use in Nevada.
The survey, released Monday night, found that 90.5 percent of front seat vehicle occupants wore their seat belts, compared with the 94.1 percent use rate in 2011.
State Office of Traffic Safety officials attribute the drop to a different method, as required by the federal government, of determining whether people wore seat belts.
Nevada Highway Patrol trooper Chuck Allen said this year’s survey checked seat belt use in rural Nevada counties where fatalities had been increasing, rather than just Clark and Washoe counties.
Besides surveying sites in rural Nevada, Office of Traffic Safety Director Traci Pearl said, researchers stayed only 40 minutes in each survey place before moving onto another site. In the past, they lingered longer at survey locations.
“I am glad we are still above
90 percent. That is our goal,” said Pearl, noting that in some rural counties seat belt use was higher than in Clark and Washoe.
Clark County’s rate, the survey said, was 90.8 percent.
Allen said the Highway Patrol will look for advertising revenue to re-emphasize the Click It or Ticket campaign and will try to do more to publicize the dangers of driving without a seat belt.
The use of safety belts has been identified as the single most effective means of reducing fatal and serious injuries in motor vehicle crashes. Seat belts are effective by protecting occupants from ejection, one of the most severe results of a motor vehicle crash. Victims ejected from motor vehicles are four times more likely to die.
Through Sept. 8, 186 people died in Nevada this year in motor vehicle accidents, up 15 from the same time last year. The total number of deaths as of Tuesday in 2012 had climbed to 195.
The 90 percent rate still is much more than the 74 percent of people who wore seat belts when the Click or Ticket campaign began in 2002.
It also is better than the 84 percent national rate last year as determined by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Since the Click It or Ticket campaign began, the state estimates 95 lives have been saved in Nevada.
Last year, 62 people died in Nevada accidents in which drivers were not wearing seat belts.
Researchers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, conducted the survey from May 21 to June 3.
Contact reporter Ed Vogel at
evogel@reviewjournal.com or 775-687-3901.