Campaigners and insurers are calling on the Government to bring in mandatory 'seat belt reminders' in cars after new research laid bare the dangers of forgetting to buckle up.
The report from Brake and AXA UK – Seat belts and passive safety systems – found that a quarter of car occupants who die in road crashes are not wearing seat belts, despite 96% saying they always wear one.
More than 1,700 people died on roads in Great Britain in 2022.
Over the last five years, around 24% of drivers and 26% of passengers who died in crashes were not wearing a seat belt. This figure rises to 41% for crashes that occur at night (6pm-8am).
Brake and AXA UK want the Government to implement the EU General Safety Regulation that stipulates that seat belt reminders should be made mandatory for all seats in all vehicles.
Brake CEO Ross Moorlock said: 'Over the last five years, a quarter of car drivers and passengers who died in road crashes on roads in Britain weren’t wearing a seat belt. From 2018 to 2022, more than 3,000 car occupants have died and 44,000 have suffered serious injuries.
'It’s reasonable to assume, therefore, that during this time period, more than 11,000 people may perhaps have been able to protect themselves against traumatic brain injuries, neck and spinal injury, and damage to internal organs.'
Alain Zweibrucker, AXA Retail CEO at AXA UK, said: 'Young drivers are amongst the most at risk of serious injury or death from not wearing seat belts, and alarmingly our research shows that 15% of drivers do not check that children under 14 are properly restrained during car journeys.'
The study also recommends a review of the 'archaic law that exempts taxi drivers from wearing a seat belt'.
Last reviewed in 1993, the law was originally introduced to prevent passengers from using a seat belt to trap a taxi driver in order to steal their cash. Now taxis have Perspex dividers and largely take cashless payment, it is time for a review of the law the report argues.
It also calls for the expansion of projects such as National Highways’ Operation Ping, which uses data captured from cameras to address non-seat-belt usage among fleet drivers.
