| That doesn't stop people from not wearing their belts, especially in states where it's not a primary seat belt law. In those states (referred to as Secondary Seat Belt Law), you can't be pulled over merely for not wearing your belt. A driver can only be ticketed for not wearing their seat belt if they have been pulled over for some other reason like speeding, unsafe lane change, etc.... So technically if you a driving the speed limit, signaling for each lane change, and do everything else by the book, you can't be stopped and cited for not wearing a seat belt. Here's some interesting statistical info:
http://www.ghsa.org/html/stateinfo/laws/seatbelt_laws.html " * 29 states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands have primary seat belt laws.
* 20 states have secondary laws.
* New Hampshire has enacted neither a primary nor a secondary seat belt law for adults, although the state does have a primary child passenger safety law that covers children under 18.
Interestingly, per that above-linked site, GA doesn't require pick up truck drivers to wear seat belts (shrug). Wikipedia too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt_legislation_in_the_United_States
They show a chart that includes a column of % seat belt usage (click on the column to sort in ascending/descending order). MA has the lowest seatbelt usage (secondary seat belt law) while MI has the highest (primary seat belt law). This isn't meant to imply that secondary law states have lower usage rates but that appears to be the trend even though there are a few anomalies where some primary law states have lower usage rate than some states with secondary laws. I see a similar situation with the cell phone laws that have been put in place. Here in CA, I see just as many people driving while talking on their cell phone (without a hands-free device) now as I did before the law was enacted. I think it must be a "I won't get caught" mindset that applies to both cases of people not wearing their seat belts and to those not using a hands-free device while driving. Dave
 Sig Quotes: "I JUST saw your polls post" email from BigTDogg on March 24, 2009 in reference to this polls post from Jan 7, 2009. "Your sausage scares me!" - TT-XTZ 6/13/05 "Or he's having a rough week like the rest of us and decided to take out his agressions of not being breast fed on me." BigTDogg 15:45, 09/25/03 "Pick her up from day care and take her to Dairy Queen for a snow cone." YugoBernie 1/7/04 of course those are canadian bannings and beatings, which after the conversion rate is really only a "hey! stop that!" Chris(NJ) 1/14/04 see the green "n" next to my name? what's COZ? (n/m) - 300zx88 8/11/04 |
