Compulsory Seat Belt Wearing in New South Wales: Effect on Vehicle Occupant Deaths

NSW Government data evaluates the effect of Regulation 110F, which made seat belt wearing compulsory in New South Wales, Australia, on vehicle occupant deaths in its first year. The regulation, under the Motor Traffic Act, 1909, set a penalty of $20 (Australian) for offenses and included exemptions for specific vehicle uses and occupants. The dataset is published by the NSW Government and was last updated on 2026-06-26.

Use Cases

• Evaluate the first-year mortality impact of a seat belt mandate based on the policy evaluation described.
• Analyze the relationship between penalty enforcement and compliance based on the $20 fine specified.
• Study exemptions and their potential effect on policy outcomes based on categories like house-to-house delivery work and children under eight.

Strengths

• Focuses on a specific policy (Regulation 110F) with a defined penalty of $20.
• Explicitly evaluates the effect on vehicle occupant deaths in the first year of the law.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic/temporal bias inherent to data_gov_au.

Provenance

Source

NSW Government

Time Range

First year of Regulation 110F

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-26 13:07:16.345114; freshness should be verified.

Geography

New South Wales, Australia