Talking Points For Editorial Board Meeting

Overall Message
We would like you to write an editorial supporting passage of a standard belt law in Illinois. This change in the vehicle code is the single greatest step legislators can take to save lives in Illinois.

Supporting Points

• A standard enforcement belt law will annually save 210 lives, prevent 6,816 injuries and save $445 million if belt use was increased to 90%.

• Increasing adult seat belt use is the most effective way to reduce the needless deaths on Illinois roadways.

• To get children buckled up we must get drivers buckled up. Most drivers who don't buckle up don't buckle up children. A recent study published in the journal Pediatrics found that driver belt use was the single greatest predictor of child restraint use. When drivers were buckled, kids were three times more likely to be buckled.

• Observational studies in Illinois show that when a driver is buckled, restraint use for children is 71%. When a driver is unbuckled, however, restraint use for children drops to 28%.

• When Louisiana passed a standard belt law, child restraint use increased from 45 percent to 82 percent in just two years - that's with no change to the state's child passenger safety law.

• On average, states that have passed strong belt laws have increased belt use by 10-15 percent.

• Car crashes are the leading cause of death for people under the age of 34.

• Car crashes are the leading cause of death to children of all races. Six out of ten children who die in crashes are completely unbuckled. Of those, more than half would be alive today if the driver had just buckled them up.

• According to the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, African American and Hispanic children are more likely to die in car crashes than white children. In fact, African American children ages five to 12 are almost three times as likely than other children to be killed in car crashes.

Costs

• Motor vehicle crash injuries cost Illinois employers approximately $1 billion a year.

• We all pay higher health care and insurance costs because of unbelted drivers and passengers. On average, inpatient hospital care costs for an unbelted crash victim are 50 percent higher than those for a crash victim who was wearing a seat belt. And society picks up 85 percent of those costs.

Background Information

• Failure to buckle up contributes to more motor vehicle fatalities than any other single factor.

• Currently, just 14 states and the District of Columbia have strong standard belt laws which permit law enforcement to issue a citation for failure to wear belts just as they do for any other traffic violation. Weak belt laws, like the one in Illinois, often called secondary laws, allow an officer to ticket a driver for not wearing a seat belt only after making a stop for another offense.

Safety Seats and Seat Belts Make a Difference

• Child safety seats, when properly installed, reduce the risk of death by 69 percent for infants and 47 percent for toddlers, according to the National Highway Traffic Administration.

Seat belt laws

• As of January 1999, 14 states and the District of Columbia have standard safety belt laws. Thirty-five states have weak "secondary" enforcement laws. At least 25 states are currently considering bills that would upgrade secondary laws to standard.

• States that originally enacted standard laws:
  Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas

• States that upgraded from secondary to standard enforcement:
  California, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Oklahoma, the District of Columbia

• States with standard enforcement bills that have been or will be introduced this year:
  Florida, Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey, Utah, Arizona, Mississippi, South Carolina, Delaware, Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, Vermont, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Tennessee, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, Massachusetts, Missouri

• When California upgraded to a standard seat belt law, seat belt usage jumped 13 percentage points from 70 percent to 83 percent in the first year after the law was strengthened.

Backgrounder For Spokespeople

Standard Seat Belt Laws:
New Messages That Can Carry the Debate
Primary enforcement seat belt laws allow police to stop and ticket a driver for not wearing a seat belt, just like any other routine traffic violation. Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have enacted these laws. The remaining 36 states have secondary laws that allow law enforcement to ticket a driver for not belting up only after the person has been stopped, or ticketed, for another violation.

States with primary laws have seat belt use that is consistently 10 to 15 percentage points higher than secondary law states. States that actively enforce their laws have achieved additional seat belt use increases in the range of 10 to 15 percentage points. These laws work and their effectiveness is easily measured.

Focus group research (including groups with legislators and other opinion leaders) in five U.S. cities shows that the seat belt debate is calcified. The debate revolves around old, familiar arguments that people think they have already heard. Many of these arguments work against passing primary enforcement seat belt laws. And the issue has no urgency. Absent new information, opinion leaders and legislators come to the debate with their minds largely made up. Research shows the most powerful arguments we have are new and are not widely known or understood. Most important is the fact that adults who don't buckle up are far less likely to buckle kids. Also important, for example in the African American and Hispanic communities, are the facts that crashes are the leading killer of all children including African American and Hispanic children. Car crashes are the second leading killer of African American young men.

As we have seen in other states - notably Indiana - these and other messages have the power to reinvigorate the debate, generate positive editorial and news coverage, and help produce greater support for action. Before the debate in state legislatures begin to calcify, it is important we try and shape that debate by presenting legislators this new information.

Adults who don't buckle up don't buckle up kids
Every state has primary enforcement seat belt laws covering children, but still six out of every ten children killed in crashes are unbelted. The evidence is clear-- if we are going to protect children in cars we must get adults buckled up. Research shows that the most effective way to get adults to wear belts is to pass primary enforcement seat belt laws. And getting adults buckled up truly does get kids buckled up.

Crashes are the leading killer of children ages 0 to 14.

A University of California, Irvine study report in the journal Pediatrics found driver restraint use was the strongest predictor of child restraint use, and a restrained driver was three times more likely to restrain a child.

A study conducted by the Ford Motor Company found that when a driver is buckled children riding with them are buckled 94 percent of the time. When drivers are unbuckled, child restraint use plummets to 30 percent.

After Louisiana passed a primary law, child restraint use rose 82 percent even though the law covering children remained the same.

Primary laws benefit African Americans
When primary seat belt laws include the strongest possible protections against potential harassment and are coupled with a coordinated education effort to alert minority communities to the law and its provisions, they get broad support from minority groups. The Campaign supports building protections against harassment into these laws, starting with the language that was drafted and included in the Maryland bill.

Motor vehicle crashes are the leading killer of African American children, 0 to 14. Crashes are the second leading killer of African American young men 15 to 24 surpassed only by homicides.

The National Urban League and Marion Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund support primary seat belt laws that include appropriate protections.

The National Black Caucus of State Legislators passed a resolution in support of primary seat belt laws.

A recent study conducted by Johns Hopkins University and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found African American male teenagers are nearly twice as likely to die in a motor vehicle crash as male teens who are white. The risk to black children ages five to 12 dying in a crash are almost three times as great as that of white children.

An eight-year study by the American Journal of Public Health offers dramatic evidence of the power of primary enforcement laws to save lives in the African American community. Even among the very hard-to-move group of 18-29 year old African American men, belt use is higher in states with primary laws -- 58 percent versus 46 percent in states with secondary laws.

Primary laws benefit Hispanics
Motor vehicle crashes are the leading killer of Hispanic children, ages 0 to 14.

A recent study conducted by Johns Hopkins University and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found Hispanic male teenagers are nearly twice as likely to die in a motor vehicle crash as other male teens.

Hispanic children, ages five to 12, are twice as dying in a crash are twice as great as that of other children.