Citation

Zhu M, Hardman SB, Cook LJ. J. Saf. Res. 2005; 36(5): 505-507.

Affiliation

New York State Department of Health, Bureau of Injury Prevention, Riverview Center, 3rd Floor-West, 150 Broadway, Menands, NY 12204-0677, United States.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2005, U.S. National Safety Council, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jsr.2005.10.014

PMID

16300793

Abstract

Low back seat safety belt use has been observed nationally in the United States, but the risk factors for non-use and the effects of non-use on crash outcomes are not well known.

This study examined two 2002 New York State public databases: police crash reports and hospital discharge data. Probabilistic linkage applies Bayesian statistical methods to link databases; observed agreements and disagreements of common fields are used to determine the probability of a match. For this study, selected match fields were date and hour of crash, geographic location, gender, age, birthday, name, injury status, crash type, and occupant type.

We built a logistic regression model to impute missing values on safety belt use and adjust potentially misclassified values. The backseat occupant safety belt use was adjusted from the recorded 69% to 35% in New York State in 2002. Driver's alcohol involvement, male gender, and nighttime crashes were associated with non-use of safety belts by adult backseat occupants. Non-use of safety belts by backseat passengers was related to higher rates in hospitalization, traumatic brain injury, and vertebral cord injury.