The State House recently held a conference to encourage support for a law that would allow police officers to ticket motorists for failing to wear their seatbelts. Now, officers can only stop drivers for a seatbelt violation as a secondary offense, meaning that drivers must be stopped for another infraction first.
The state is lagging behind most of the country because as of last November, 17 other states had already made a seatbelt violation a primary offense, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Massachusetts drivers wear seatbelts only 50 percent of the time, compared to the national average of 70 percent, according to the seatbelt advocacy group SAFE Coalition.
Seatbelts save lives. They increase the chance of surviving a crash by nearly 45 percent, according to the National Highway Safety Administration. In addition, an estimated 638,000 more motorists would wear their seatbelts if the new law were enacted, saving about 30-40 lives a year, said Rep. Timothy Toomey (D-Cambridge), House Chair for the Joint Committee on Public Safety.
While seatbelt critics may cite examples where people died as a result of wearing seatbelts, these situations are the exceptions. On average, smaller accidents are far more common occurrences than the multiple-car pileups. Seatbelts can greatly reduce the injuries sustained in these smaller accidents.
Furthermore, although opponents to this law may argue that it would give only officers another reason to stop and ticket motorists, the law would save state taxpayers money in the long run. The state usually incurs the medical costs for uninsured accident victims; the average health care costs for patients who failed to wear their seatbelts is as much as $7,000, while victims who wore their seatbelts may only have to pay $1,000 on average.
Other State House legislators should support this change to the current seatbelt law because it would benefit the state by decreasing the number of preventable deaths and injuries each year and the money taxpayers must spend on victims of these accidents.
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