Study points to need for seat belt education

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The Alberta Centre for Injury Control and Research in the University of Alberta's department of public health sciences has released the report of its first injury prevention project conducted with a First Nation.

The pilot project, designed to increase the seat belt wearing rate in Wabasca/Desmarais, about 120 km from Slave Lake, was conducted with Bigstone Cree Nation at the store and gas station in Desmarais at the end of August. It revealed the seat belt wearing rate for all vehicle occupants in Wabasca/Desmarais is 34.4 per cent, whereas the provincial rate is 87 per cent. Approximately 2,000 nation members live on reserve.

Assistant Professor J. Peter Rothe supervised the study, while research associate Josie Cardinal drafted the questions, obtained the First Nation's support and hired the interviewers. Tina Cardinal and Lyla Brule were the Bigstone Nation's research assistants who interviewed drivers and vehicle passengers and recorded data. They asked 12 questions of 167 interviewees over four-hour periods for six days.

Josie Cardinal said they chose Wabasca/Desmarais because the community was "accessible." Cardinal is a Bigstone band member and had the support of her community for the study.

"The people were shocked at the low rate of seat belt wearing," she said.

Rothe instructed the interviewers only to record data for front seat occupants. This is because they felt it was too hard to see whether rear seat occupants were wearing lap belts.

Most significant in their documented findings was that nearly all drivers knew about the seat belt law and that they risked getting ticketed for not wearing them. But more than one in three people thought there was little or no chance of getting caught. While 90.4 per cent of the drivers said they "were aware" seat belts could save lives, only 82 per cent said they believed it.

The observed seat belt wearing rate for all drivers was 36.5 per cent; for all passengers only 30.1 per cent. Yet nearly 50 per cent of the drivers said they would make sure their passengers wore seat belts "all or most" of the time.

Male and female drivers had about the same rate of compliance with the law. Drivers aged 40 to 60 wore seat belts 50 per cent of the time, but the youngest drivers were least likely to wear them - only 31.3 per cent. Only one in seven children under age three was in an infant seat. Conversely, 61 per cent of drivers with more than 11 years' driving experience wore seat belts.

The lowest rate of seat belt wearing was documented for pickup truck drivers (31.6 per cent), and significantly more males (55.4 per cent) than females (41.9 per cent) said they would allow passengers in the box of a pickup truck.

Almost the same number of males (56.9 per cent) said they would pick up more passengers than they had seat belts for, while only 40 per cent of the females said they would do that. Forty per cent of all drivers said they would pick up family and friends at the side of the road, regardless of how many seatbelts were in the vehicle.

Drivers in the 16 to 24 age range were most likely to allow passengers in the box of a pickup truck, but only 44.4 per cent of over age 60 drivers would.

Francis Gladue, associate health director at the Bigstone Health Centre says the study is a good start to try and promote more safety in the community.

"This is only the first part, seatbelts," he said. "With the help of other community organizations like the RCMP, our leadership, probably the Keeweetinok Lakes Regional Health Authority - that kind of support as a community - I think with the interagency community concept, the more the better to try to develop a safety feature for our community. And I think the leadership were quite supportive in that matter too, so I think we got the ball rolling in the right direction on safety."

Gladue says they'll continue to promote seat belt awareness "from the health perspective, the point of view of the law, the point of view of education."

JosieCardinal says Gladue is getting costs from Public Works for signs to remind people that seat belt wearing is the law. She says they'll probably hold off until the ground thaws next spring to put up the signs.

"I think sometimes these things take a little more time than a three-month study can measure," she said. She indicates they'll do another survey when the signs have been up a while and more education has been done.

Const. Elissa Purvis of the Desmarais RCMP detachment was present when the results were released to Bigstone band members. Soon after, she said the community may get a demonstration of an educational tool called a "seatbelt convincer." This apparatus demonstrates the force and results of a collision when someone is not wearing a seat belt.

"I have noticed an improvement [in seat belt wearing] over the year and a half that I've been here, but there have been a lot of accidents in the last little while" said Purvis. "It's proven that seatbelts do save lives. It's just a matter of enforcing that and getting people educated and I believe that's what Josie's trying to do with this survey."