Nighttime seat belt use among front seat passengers: Does the driver's belt use matter?

Introduction And Method: We explored the relationship between nighttime seat belt use of right-front passengers and their drivers using observational data from 33,310 vehicles in east Tennessee during March 2015 - May 2017.

Results: Overall, nighttime passenger seat belt use varied by 50 percentage points from 92% when drivers were belted to 42% when drivers were not belted, suggesting that part-time seat belt users can be heavily influenced by the seat belt status of their traveling companions. When stratified by vehicle type and sex, passenger seat belt use by driver seat belt status varied as much as 74 percentage points from 96% to 22%.

Correlates of front-seat passengers' non-use of seatbelts at night.

When properly worn, seatbelts can save lives. They are designed to prevent occupants from hitting objects inside their vehicle and from being ejected out of their vehicle in the event of a crash. Despite their proven effectiveness in reducing the severity of injuries, seatbelt non-use among passengers still remains a problem, especially at night.

A comparative study of rail-pedestrian trespassing crash injury severity between highway-rail grade crossings and non-crossings.

Rail-trespassing crashes that involve various levels of injuries to pedestrians are under-researched. Rail trespassing could occur at crossings where pedestrians are present at the wrong time and at non-crossings where pedestrians are not legally allowed to be present. This paper presents a comparative study examining rail-trespassing crashes in two contexts: highway-rail grade crossings vs.

What are the differences in driver injury outcomes at highway-rail grade crossings? Untangling the role of pre-crash behaviors.

Crashes at highway-rail grade crossings can result in severe injuries and fatalities to vehicle occupants. Using a crash database from the Federal Railroad Administration (N=15,639 for 2004-2013), this study explores differences in safety outcomes from crashes between passive controls (Crossbucks and STOP signs) and active controls (flashing lights, gates, audible warnings and highway signals). To address missing data, an imputation model is developed, creating a complete dataset for estimation.