Northwest Iowa — Teenagers are lagging behind when it comes to seatbelt use, while most parents are taking the right steps to protect babies in cars. That according to a study by the University of Iowa Injury Prevention Research Center.
Cara Hamann led the study which showed adults are following Iowa’s child safety seat law.
She says the high use of car seats is likely a result of educational efforts to inform parents of the proper way to transport kids.
According to Hamann, the use of the safety equipment in cars goes down as the kids get older.
Hamann says many of those teens don’t have an adult with them in the car and that could be why their seatbelt use is lower.
The U-I survey also found that people who live in Iowa’s smaller towns are less likely to use seatbelts.
Hamann says the lower use of seatbelts in rural communities could be because there are fewer education programs there. There could also be a feeling that there’s not as much traffic in smaller towns and less of a worry about accidents.
The survey found 88 percent of the people in communities with one-thousand to 25-hundred residents used the proper seatbelt or child seat in cars. That moves to 93 percent in communities with 50-thousand people or more. The surveys have been conducted since 1988 and Hamann says there are some areas for improvement, but overall Iowans do a good job.
The surveys are funded by the Governor’s Traffic Safety Bureau (GTSB) within the Iowa Department of Public Safety.
