Six per cent of NI back seat passengers still don’t belt up

FIGURES from the latest Northern Ireland Survey of Seat Belt Wearing show that, while overall seat belt wearing rates remain high at 98%, around six per cent of back seat passengers are still not using a seat belt or other suitable restraint.

Whilst this is still a major improvement from 1994 when only around one in two back street passengers were properly restrained, the wearing rate for this group has not changed from last year. Of those passengers travelling in the back, adults were less likely (92%) to wear a restraint than children (96%).

Five per cent of children aged 10-13, six per cent of those aged five to nine and three per cent of those aged one to four years were unrestrained when travelling in the back of a car.

For the first time since the survey began in 1994, there were no recorded instances of a child under one travelling unrestrained in the back.

Survey data were collected during April 2012 at 12 sites throughout Northern Ireland covering urban, rural and motorway locations.

Fieldwork involved observing stationary traffic and recording details including gender, estimated age and whether a seat belt or child restraint was being used. In total 13,855 cars were observed and details of 20,852 occupants recorded.

The key points to note from the survey are:

Wearing rates in cars

* 98% of all car occupants observed used a restraint.

* 98% of drivers and front seat passengers wore a restraint.

* 94% of back seat passengers wore a restraint.

* 98% of both male and female drivers were restrained.

* 96% of male and 98% of female front seat passengers were restrained.

* Adult back seat passengers were less likely (92%) to wear a restraint than child back seat passengers (96%).

* 5% of children aged 10-13, 6% of those aged 5-9 and 3% of those aged 1-4 were unrestrained when travelling in the back of a car.

* 99% of drivers on rural roads were restrained compared to 98% of drivers on urban roads.

* 1% of drivers were observed using a mobile phone.

Wearing rates in vans and taxis

* 86% of van drivers were restrained, an increase of 12 percentage points from 2007 when wearing rates of van drivers were first collected.

* 82% of taxi drivers were restrained, a 15 percentage point improvement since 2007 when this group were first included in the survey.

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