About 14 percent of Americans don't use seat belts, according to a county-level map from The Washington Post using data from 2012 from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, an ongoing poll by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Numbers are much higher in some areas, especially in northern Plains states of Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota, where about 50 percent of drivers don't wear seat belts. (Post map)
The Post's Christopher Ingraham notes that in Nebraska and the Dakotas, lower seat belt use could be attributed to laws saying police "can only ticket drivers for not wearing seat belts if they've already pulled them over for something else, such as speeding." States with those laws typically have lower seat-belt use. States with higher use have laws where police can stop drivers simply for not wearing a seat belt.
No comments:
Post a Comment