Twenty U.S. states submitted summary and final reports to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for grant-funded Occupant Protection Special Traffic Enforcement Programs. The data includes over 273,000 seat belt citations and nearly one million other citations issued, plus over 300,000 public information items distributed. Seat belt use rates increased, with greater gains in primary law states (+16.8 percentage points) than secondary law states (+5.6 points).
Use Cases
- Evaluate the correlation between enforcement intensity (citations issued) and seat belt use rate changes.
- Compare the effectiveness of traffic safety programs between primary and secondary law states.
- Analyze the role of public information and education items (aired, printed, distributed) in behavioral outcomes.
Strengths
- Includes case study data from three specific states: Indiana, Iowa, and New Jersey.
- Reports over 273,437 seat belt citations and 963,895 other citations, providing concrete enforcement metrics.
- Quantifies program output with over 300,000 public information and education items.
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 bias inherent to the 20 participating states.
Provenance
- Source
- National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) grant reports submitted by states.
- Collection Method
- Summary and final reports collected from 20 states, with case studies conducted in Indiana, Iowa, and New Jersey.
- Geography
- United States, with data from 20 states and detailed case studies in Indiana, Iowa, and New Jersey.