Safety Belt and Motorcycle Helmet Use in Virginia: The 2000 Update

About the report:

This series of surveys to determine the safety belt and motorcycle helmet use rates in Virginia was initiated to qualify the Commonwealth for incentive funds in accordance with the requirements of Section 153 of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991. To receive funds, states had to have laws requiring the use of safety belts and motorcycle helmets and to meet certain use rate standards. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration specified the survey criteria to be used in determining a state's use rate. Even though the section 153 funding program ended in 1994, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles requested that data collection continue and that the same methods, procedures, and sites be used for all future survey efforts. In addition, there is a new grant program, Section 157 of TEA21, which requires the same methodology for determining use as was used in the earlier program. This report describes the methodology used for site selection and data collection and adds the results of the 2000 survey to those for the previous years (1992-99). The results show that Virginia's 2000 safety belt use rate was 69.9% and its motorcycle helmet use rate was 99.9%. The helmet use rate had been 100% in the first 5 years of the study (1992-1996) and was 98.7% in 1997,99.6% in 1998, and 99.1% in 1999. For the first 8 years the survey was conducted (1992-99), the safety belt use rates were 71.6%,73.2%,71.8%,70.2%,69.6%, 67.1%,73.6%, and 69.9% respectively.

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