Citation

Boontop N. Proc. Road Saf. Four Continents Conf. 2007; 14: 17p.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Conference Sponsor)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Using of safety equipment is one of the road effective strategies for the prevention of death and the reduction of injury in road crashes. Seat belts are designed to hold the occupant of a car against harmful movement that may occur from a crash or a sudden stop. Most of the motorcyclists do not have any protection system from vehicle. Helmet is only common equipment that has been used for head protection. This research was conducted to investigate the factors influencing seat belt and helmet use in Thailand. In addition, this study was to analyze the impact of seat belt and helmet use in motor vehicle crashes by using the injury data from hospital. The influencing factors of seat belt and helmet use were determined by using the field observation. The field observation of seat belt and helmet users show that the highest rate of seat belt use by region was observed as the highest in Central region and the lowest in South region while, the helmet use was found the highest in South region and the lowest in North region. Rear seating position seat belt use rate are significantly lower than driver and front seating position. For motorcyclists, the helmet use rate follow the same trend, that the helmet use rate in riders was higher than pillion number 2 and pillion number 3 in all regions. The seat belt and helmet use rate are decrease significantly for children for all regions. Seat belt and helmet rates are highest on urban area, but it seems that vehicle occupant in Central region are not use their seat belt or helmet up on short, local trips, as usage rates are lowest on urban area. Comparing between daytime and nighttime, seat belt and helmet use rate are lower at nighttime than daytime in all case. Seat belt and helmet use rate are not significantly different between weekday and weekend. From hospital accident data, the seat belt and helmet use rate were lower than field observation. These figures indicate the low percentage of usage rate of the restraint system and protection by the victimized road user groups. The fatality reduction analysis, the results in all regions were shown that, some of the injury or fatality victims could be saved by using of seat belt or helmet. The results clearly indicated that the car occupants who were unbelted have higher risk to be killed than those who were belted. And also, the motorcyclists who do not use helmet have a higher risk to be killed than those who do use helmet. Therefore, this study can be concluded that contributed injuries from crash can be reduced or prevented by protective devices like seat belts for car occupants and helmet for motorcyclist.