There was a time, long before political correctness, skinless fried chicken and the 55 mile-per-hour speed limit, when life had fewer rules and the purpose of a seat belt, it seemed, wasn’t to save lives but to get tangled up and jab car occupants who were trying to nap.
“We never wore seat belts when I was a kid,” 40-year-old Maripat Baber recalled. “Remember those big back seats? My brother and I would be wrestling back there.”
But today, whenever the Babers get into their sedan, the Barrington couple and their two sons all get properly belted-or else.
“You get in, you buckle up,” Jim Baber, 36, said repeating the family mantra. “When you buckle up, then the car goes into drive.”
Certainly, seat belts are a drag. They cut across the neck and shoulders. They make it impossible to fish toll money from a jeans pocket. Kids can’t fight effectively in the back seat. And they generally inhibit the free spirits of the world.
“Too constricting,” said Krista Kaad, a 23-year-old Schaumburg waitress, after popping unencumbered from her black sports car in a long black leather coat.
But then Kaad confessed that she wears a belt most of the time.
And so do most people. In less than a decade, America has gone from a nation in which a relative handful of people wore belts-and may have been considered a bit wimpy to boot-to a time when even tough guys buckle up.
At the end of last year, the U.S. Transportation Department reported that traffic fatalities were the lowest in 30 years-a fact attributable in large part to the increased use of seat belts.
How did this happen?
The story of the seat belt and how it has gotten a lock on America’s consciousness is a rare instance of law, public relations and pop culture teaming up to genuinely change behavior.
Batman played a part. So did a couple of goofy crash dummies named Vince and Larry. There was even the story of the flying bowling ball.
The most important element was the law change.
All cars have had modern seat belts since 1968, but only 14 percent of passengers were buckling up in 1983-the year before New York passed the first mandatory seat belt use law.
Since then, 42 states have adopted seat belt requirements, and in that time, national seat belt use has climbed to 63 percent. New rules requiring cars to contain automatic safety belts or airbags have also significantly boosted use.
But officials say rules and regulations only go so far. That is particularly true with seat belts because most states, including Illinois, adopted a weak seat belt law.
The law requires front-seat occupants to buckle up, but police cannot stop a car to check for compliance. Instead, only motorists cited for another offense can be ticketed for a seat belt violation. In Canada, where vehicles can be stopped for a seat belt violation, belt use is more than 20 percentage points higher.
Illinois figures show that after the law passed here, seat belt use immediately doubled to 40 percent-and then stalled.
“There’s a lot of habitual behavior,” explained Roberta Clarke, a Boston University marketing professor who has studied the seat belt issue. “There’s also a lot of denial. People think they aren’t going to be the ones to get into an accident.”
There was also widespread resentment that the seat belt law was an infringement on personal liberty. “A lot people thought: You can’t force me to do something that will only protect me,” said Gary March, director of the Illinois Department of Transportation division of traffic safety.
The big change in attitude has come in the past several years, after the government kicked off an aggressive marketing campaign carried out the same way corporate America sells soda or deodorant: There was catchy advertising, a public relations blitz and a well-trained sales force, who in this case drive police cars and were trained to get tough on the often-ignored law.
Pressure also came from Hollywood, which had been very slow to depict drivers belting up.
Until a lobby group there started a campaign in 1987, about the only safety-conscious driver on television was Batman, who never left the Batcave unless he and Robin were buckled up. But then, he drank milk too.
“Nobody had thought about it,” said Larry Deutchman of the Entertainment Industries Council. “When actors get in a car, most of the time, it’s simulated driving. They were too busy playing their roles and being towed around on the back of a truck to notice.”
Deutchman said that the EIC campaign, which included distributing an annual memo to producers, has gotten 80 percent of television drivers to use seat belts, compared with maybe 10 percent five years ago.
Belt use even extends to cartoons, where observant viewers of a “Flintstones” movie Sunday night will note that Fred is buckled up.
There is, of course, little doubt that seat belts save lives.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the occupant of a car involved in a serious accident is 45 percent more likely to escape injury or death when wearing a safety belt. Driving a car equipped with an airbag adds an additional 10 percent degree of protection.
In human terms, the NHTSA estimates that 29,568 lives were saved by safety belts from 1983 through 1991. Since 1982, the auto fatality rate has fallen to an all-time low of 1.8 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled.
The government campaign to promote safety belts was initiated by President George Bush, who called in late 1989 for the nation to reach the 70 percent usage mark by the end of last year. At the time, the figure stood at less than 50 percent.
While officials didn’t hit their target-the national number is now 63 percent-the government did change the habits of millions of people who didn’t wear belts because they felt they were uncomfortable or wrinkled clothes, or because they mistakenly believed they would be safer without belts.
The campaign started with the popular public service advertisements starring two talking crash dummies named Vince and Larry. The ads, with its familiar signature line, “You could learn a lot from a dummy,” are credited by the government as being a “significant factor” in increasing safety belt use since the humorous pair was introduced in 1985.
The overall campaign, which Bush dubbed “Operation Buckle Down” trickled down through the 45 states that participated to the local level, said Michael Witter, a regional program manager in Illinois for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
For example, in Illinois, with encouragement and public relations help from the federal government, the state police conducted five “blitzes” in 1992 in which they made concentrated efforts to publicize and enforce the law.
And the Boone County Health Department, using a $50,000 grant, assigned a worker to start a seat belt publicity program.
Melinda Bargren did presentations to civic groups and schools, even dressing up with an assistant as Vince and Larry and pantomiming to a recorded skit.
“People think it’s funny,” she said. “At least people remember.”
Bargren said that using an approved IDOT surveying technique, she determined that seat belt use in Boone County during her program increased from 48 percent to 63 percent.
The same kind of effort has had results at the community level. In Elgin, where the Police Department received Operation Buckle Down pamphlets, proclamations and press releases, Sgt. Terry Sterricker made seat belt safety a cottage industry.
Sterricker organized a $15 seat belt class for people caught driving unbuckled. If they attend the class, they avoid the $75 fine and blot on their driving record. The one-hour class includes a lecture, videotapes and Sterricker’s story about the bowling ball that flew out the window of one car and right through the windows of another during a multicar collision.
“It’s a simple matter of dynamics,” he said, illustrating the ability of a crash victim to become a human missile. “It’s amazing what an unbelted person in the back seat can do to a belted person in the front seat.”
Sterricker, who is commander of Elgin’s traffic division, said he knows Operation Buckle Down was successful because the last sobriety road check was the first one in which seat belt violations were not the leading violation cited.
“We see a lot of unnecessary loss of life,” Sterricker said. “But because of our enforcement and ongoing education, we’re starting to get the message out.”
