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Safety Belt-Use Drops Fatality Rate 70%

A recent study by Farmer's Insurance also found that rear-end collisions are less deadly than T-bone collisions and larger vehicles provided better protection than a smaller-sized car in a crash.

by Staff
November 29, 2007
1 min to read


Using the 2006 fatal crash data released by the United States Department of Transportation, Farmers Insurance has completed a study to determine the most influential factors in drivers’ mortality rate in multi-vehicle accidents. The research concluded that when a driver used a seat belt, the odds of a fatality dropped nearly 70 percent compared to a driver who did not Several other factors showed significance in decreasing the odds of a driver’s death. For example, rear-end collisions proved less deadly than head-on or T-bone collisions. Larger vehicles, such as trucks, SUVs, and vans, appeared to protect the driver better than a typical automobile. Dry roads, in contrast with wet roads, decrease the odds of a fatality by over 10 percent. Other factors increased danger on the roads. Nighttime and winter driving tended to produce more deadly accidents. Certain accident events, such as rollovers, ejections and vehicle fires, greatly reduced the survivability in an accident. Motorcycle accidents showed remarkably increased mortality rates compared to other vehicles. The analysis incorporates a logistic econometric model with forty-one variables, accounting for factors such as road and traffic conditions at the time of the fatal accident, location and time, accident events, vehicle specifics, driver demographics, and safety features.

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