Tag Archive: primary seat belt laws

Rear Seat Adult Passengers Fail To Use Seat Belts

November 23, 2015

In February of this year, 60 Minutes correspondent and CBS newsman Bob Simon, was riding as a rear seat passenger in a livery cab when it was involved in a crash. Simon, who wasn’t wearing a seat belt, received massive head and torso injuries and died shortly after being taken to a hospital.

The Governors Highway Safety Administration (GHSA) says that too many adults riding in the rear seat fail to wear a seat belt and almost half of those who were killed in crashes could have survived had they been wearing a seat belt. According to a report by the GHSA, in 2013, 883 unrestrained rear seat passengers age eight and older were killed in crashes. The GHSA estimates that more than 400 of them would have survived if they had been wearing a seat belt.

The GHSA report places a lot of the blame for the lack of seat belt use among rear seat passengers on the states for failing to pass strict seat belt laws that require all occupants of a motor vehicle to use seat belts; no matter where they are seated. Only sixteen states and the District of Columbia currently have primary seat belt laws that require everyone in the vehicle in both the front and rear seat to be buckled up at all times. Ten states have secondary laws requiring rear seat seat belt use but those laws can only be enforced if the driver is stopped for another “primary” traffic offense. Some states have a mix of primary front seat and secondary rear seat laws. Twenty-two states, including Florida, have no laws at all requiring the use of seat belts by adults in the rear seat.

Among the states with stricter rear seat seat belt laws, seat belts are used by approximately 83 percent of adults in the rear seat while in states with no rear seat laws, only 74 percent of adults use seat belts. There is a direct correlation between state seat belt laws and use of seat belts by adults in the rear seat.

Even if they have primary seat belt laws for all seating positions, some states, including New York, don’t require rear seat passengers in taxis or cars-for-hire to wear seat belts. In the case of Bob Simon, he wasn’t required by law to wear a seat belt but many feel he would have survived the crash if he had been wearing one.

Adults who don’t use seat belts in the rear seat often aren’t the only ones killed or injured in a crash. Even those in the front seat who are using seat belts can be killed in a crash when they’re struck by the rear seat adult’s body as it flies forward and bounces around the interior of the vehicle.

The GHSA calls on states to enact strict, primary seat belt laws requiring all passengers, including those in the rear seat to wear a seat belt at all times. Even if your state doesn’t require the use of seat belts by adults in the rear seat, it’s always a good idea to wear one. Seat belts save lives.