Factors related to seatbelt-wearing among rear-seat passengers in Malaysia
Highlights
► We develop three multinomial logistic models to predict the seatbelt-wearing tendency among rear seat passengers. ► Rear-seat passengers who had a lower risk-aversion were less likely to wear a rear seatbelt. ► A significant positive correlation was found between driver seatbelt and rear seatbelt-wearing behaviour.
Introduction
Wearing a rear seatbelt has proven to be effective in reducing the risk of death of motorcar occupants, especially rear-seat passengers, in motor vehicle crashes (King and Yang, 1995, Brown and Cline, 2001, Ichikawa et al., 2002, Broughton, 2004, Shimamura et al., 2005, Zhu et al., 2007, Carpenter and Stehr, 2008) because seatbelt can prevent rear-seat passengers from being ejected from the car and help to avoid human collisions amongst the rear-seat passengers and also colliding with front-seat occupants during a road crash.
Based on the Global Status Report of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Road Safety, most countries have enforced seatbelt-wearing for motor vehicle front occupants, however, not many countries; have strict enforcement on the wearing of a rear seatbelt (WHO, 2009). The WHO reported that the compliance rate of rear seatbelt-wearing is higher in high-income countries such as Australia (92%), Sweden (90%), United Kingdom (90%), Germany (88%), Canada (87%), New Zealand (87%), Norway (85%), France (83%), Czech Republic (80%), Finland (80%), United States (76%) and the Netherlands (73%). The report also showed that most middle-income countries enforced the rear seatbelt legislation but the compliance rates are much lower, such as Peru (25%), Romania (20%), Morocco (19%), Ecuador (10%), Honduras (10%), Mauritius (10%), South Africa (8%), Serbia (5%), Thailand (3%), Namibia (1%) and Oman (1%). Rear seatbelt legislation essentially does not exist in low-income countries.
The literature on rear seatbelt-wearing has demonstrated that the compliance rate is much lower than that with front-seatbelts. A study conducted in the United States reported that seatbelt-wearing among adults in the rear seat was only 50.4% vs. 82.2% for the front-seat (Trowbridge and Kent, 2009). The authors pointed out that the low compliance rate of rear seatbelt-wearing in comparison to the front-seatbelt-wearing may be because the risk of being killed and seriously injured in the rear seat is comparably lower than in the front-seat.1 In addition, it may be attributed to poor enforcement of rear seatbelt-wearing; and the absence of publicity and promotion of the wearing of rear seatbelts.
In Malaysia,2 driver and front passenger seatbelt legislation was enforced in 1978. Kulanthayan et al. (2004) conducted a study in the state of Selangor and revealed that seatbelt-wearing compliance rates among motorcar drivers and front-seat passengers were 76.6% and 56.0%, respectively. Rear seatbelt legislation in Malaysia3 only took effect on January 1, 2009. Six months prior to the launching of the rear seatbelt legislation, the Malaysia Road Safety Department carried out a series of promotional campaigns, such as placing advertisements on the radio and television to raise awareness of the role of rear seatbelt-wearing in promoting motorcar passenger safety (Norlen et al., 2008). One month after the rear seatbelt legislation came into force, the Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research (MIROS) reported that the compliance rate with rear seatbelt-wearing was 48.15%. However, by October 2009, the compliance rate had decreased to 13.9% (MIROS, 2011). A study conducted in the federal territory of Putrajaya 6 months after the rear seatbelt legislation was introduced also revealed that the rate of rear seatbelt-wearing was low, at just 4.8% (Norlen et al., 2010).
Despite increasing evidence showing that not wearing a seatbelt while travelling is an unsafe practice, many rear-seat passengers still engage in this behaviour. Hence, the objective of this study was to identify the factors that are associated with rear seatbelt-wearing among motorcar occupants in Malaysia. These factors included demographic variables (age, gender, education level, and marital status), perceived enforcement level, the risk-aversion effect, driving experience and driver seatbelt-wearing (for rear-seat passengers who were also drivers). The risk-aversion effect, measured by the disparity between the willingness to accept (WTA) and the willingness to pay (WTP) for road safety, was used to investigate the relationship between risk-averse behaviour and rear seatbelt-wearing behaviour. Two other variables, driving experience and driver seatbelt-wearing behaviour, were used to investigate the rear seatbelt-wearing behaviour of drivers when they travelled as rear-seat passengers. Our aim was to compare the difference between the rear seatbelt-wearing behaviour of drivers (when they are rear passengers) and rear passengers and identify more effective interventions and policies to improve compliance with rear seatbelt-wearing.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides the study design, whilst Section 3 presents empirical results. Section 4 contains discussion of the results. Section 5 recommends future research in this area, followed by conclusion in Section 6.
Section snippets
The study design
Road safety research has found that attitudes towards and awareness of road safety issues have an impact on on-road risky behaviour and, hence, on the risk of road crashes and injuries (Elander et al., 1993, Sümer, 2003, Ulleberg, 2003, Jonah et al., 2001, Iversen and Rundmo, 2004, Feenstra et al., 2010). In view of this, we hypothesised that rear-seat passengers who have a higher road safety risk-aversion are more likely to wear a rear seatbelt. In examining this hypothesis, the disparity
Participants demographics and characteristics
A summary of respondents’ demographic characteristics is presented in Table 1. Most respondents were aged 21–29 years old (48.9%), male (53.4%), married (53.0%), and with tertiary education (63.1%). The self-reported rear seatbelt-wearing was generally low with about 46% of rear-seat passengers never wearing a rear seatbelt. However, compared with pure passengers and drivers as rear-seat passengers, 48.2% of drivers never wore their rear seatbelt when they travelled as rear-seat passengers.
Discussion
The objective of this study was to identify factors associated with rear seatbelt-wearing behaviour of rear passengers. The results showed that younger rear-seat passengers were less likely to wear a rear seatbelt than older rear-seat passengers. One possible reason for this finding is that the risk perception among young car occupants are generally lowers compared to older car occupants (Trankle et al., 1990, Deery, 1999, Begg and Langley, 2000). A study by Trowbridge and Kent (2009) also
Recommendations for further research
Although the empirical analysis in this study has contributed to an understanding of rear seatbelt-wearing behaviour, results from this study raise a number of issues that could form the basis of further research. The purpose of the questionnaire survey was to assess rear seatbelt-wearing behaviour, which was categorized into frequently, seldom and never. However, the study did not identify when and where the rear-seat passengers were not wearing a rear seatbelt. This information is crucial for
Conclusion
In summary of the study results, a rear-seat passenger who is younger, male, single, with a lower education, less likely to wear a driver seatbelt (only for passengers who are also drivers) and with less driving experience were less likely to wear the rear seatbelt. The study also revealed that rear-seat passengers’ tendency to wear a seatbelt increased as their road safety risk-aversion and perceived higher level of legislation enforcement. However, enforcement is only a short-term measure to
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by the FIA Foundation and Malaysia Institute of Road Safety Research (MIROS). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the FIA Foundation and MIROS.
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