The Associated Press State & Local Wire
Worcester, MA
June 13, 2004, Sunday, BC cycle

Mass has lowest safety belt use in country

Massachusetts had the lowest rate of safety belt use among 47 states recently compared by a federal transportation safety agency.
As of September 2003, the national rate of safety belt use stood at 79 percent. In Massachusetts, it was 62 percent, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration found.
"I think the way to sum it up is that Massachusetts has one of the lowest safety belt rates in the nation," Brook Chipman, spokesman for the Governor's Highway Safety Bureau, told the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester.
The state also had an unusually large percentage of teens and young adults who weren't wearing seat belts when they died or suffered incapacitating injuries in car crashes, according to another federal agency's figures.
In 2002, nationally, 64 percent of people between the ages of 16 and 20 and 68 percent of those between ages 18 and 34 who were killed or seriously injured in crashes weren't wearing seat belts. In Massachusetts, the percentages were 82 percent and 83 percent, respectively.
One obstacle to enforcing more seat belt use, the newspaper reported, is that Massachusetts is one of 29 states with a so-called "secondary" law, which doesn't allow police to ticket people for seat belt violations unless they have first pulled over a vehicle for some other reason.
Maine also has a secondary seat belt law, and New Hampshire has no adult seat belt law.
In Maine, anyone 4 or older must use a safety belt. Police in Maine may stop a vehicle and cite the driver if an unbuckled person in it is under 18. If the unbuckled person is 18 or older, the law may be enforced only if the driver is stopped for a violation of another law.
Maine, New Hampshire and some territories did not report seat belt use rates in 2001 or 2002, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a report dated May 2003.
In a study of Maine crashes during 1996, 37 percent of the occupants reported as not wearing seat belts were injured, the state Bureau of Highway Safety said.
States that have a "primary" law that allows police to stop a car solely for lack of seat belt use have, for the most part, substantially higher rates of seat belt use, including California, at 91 percent; Oregon, at 90 percent; Indiana, at 82 percent; and Iowa, at 87 percent.
Fifty Massachusetts health and public safety agencies have now formed a coalition called Seat Belts Are for Everyone to push for passage of a primary law, the newspaper reported.
The measure died in the House on a tie vote, but there is a move afoot to have it revived before the end of the current legislative session, Gloria T.A. Craven, a policy strategist and coordinator for the SAFE coalition, told the Telegram & Gazette. She said that the Senate and Republican Gov. Mitt Romney support the bill.
Aside from reducing pain and suffering, increasing seat belt use can save society money because those ejected from cars often suffer serious brain or spinal cord injuries that require tens of millions of dollars of medical care a year, the newspaper reported.
"The cost is borne by all of us," Craven said.

Worcester Telegram & Gazette Worcester, MA
June 13, 2004 Sunday, ALL EDITIONS

A bee, a scream, a life in a wheelchair
 Pamela H. Sacks; TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

The vignette is titled ''A New Ball Game,'' and it appears on the Web site of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
It is the story of an athletic 17-year-old high school girl named Tammy Wilber, who was co-captain of her soccer team.
She was driving 80 miles an hour down a New Hampshire highway with three friends on a sunny summer day. They were headed to soccer camp. A bee flew into the car, and one of the girls, who was allergic to bee stings, started to scream.
Startled, Tammy drove off the road, after losing control of the car. It flipped three times. None of the girls was wearing a seat belt. Tammy was thrown against the steering wheel and ejected from the vehicle. She injured her spinal cord and was immediately paralyzed from the chest down.
The vignette ends with a quote from Tammy: ''Buckle up. Life's too short to have to push yourself around in a wheelchair.''
Today, Ms. Wilber is 28 and living in Washington state with her boyfriend, Alex Lapp. In a telephone conversation from her home in Seattle, she said that nothing about her situation gets easier.
''Each day is still a challenge,'' Ms. Wilber said. ''I deal with it every day.''
She recalled that she was conscious during the entire accident and realized that she could not move.
''I didn't quite understand the extent of a spinal cord injury, that it was permanent,'' Ms. Wilber said. ''I thought, 'I hurt my back. I'll get better.' ''
When she came off most of the pain medication, she began to understand that she would be paralyzed for the rest of her life. Initially, she turned to her family for strength. Eventually, she had to seek therapy.
''I had gone through depression and all the stages of denial,'' she said. ''I had never mourned the loss of my legs. I lost a part of who I was and my freedom.''
She returned to Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, N.H., a month late, determined to graduate with her classmates. Initially, everyone was supportive. The town threw a benefit to help cover her medical costs. ''I was the one who felt so different,'' she said. ''I tried to be social, but I shied away from people for a while.''
Her core group of friends helped her dress and get around, and they have remained close to this day. Other friends drifted away. The three girls in the car with her were not permanently injured.After struggling for six years with snowy New Hampshire winters, Ms. Wilber picked up and moved on her own to Miami. ''It was a really hard thing to do,'' she said.
Mr. Lapp, an occupational therapist, was vacationing in her new home city when they met. A couple of years ago, Ms. Wilber joined him in Seattle.
For the last 10 years, Ms. Wilber has supported herself by sharing her story with young people through a program run by an injury-prevention organization called ThinkFirst. On the day she talked with a Sunday Telegram reporter, she had just come from her final engagement, this one with high school seniors. She was let go after funding was cut.
"They have their prom coming up next weekend,'' Ms. Wilber said of her audience. ''I said, 'Imagine having to go to your prom in a wheelchair and go to college in a wheelchair.' ''
Since then, she has started a new job in the rehabilitation department of the University of Washington Medical Center, working with patients who have neurological disorders. And she is about to complete her degree in community and human services through an online college program.
She hopes to find a way to continue to talk to young people. On that summer day 11 years ago, she said, she knew she should buckle her seat belt. She just didn't do it.
"I have to live with the consequences of the choice I made,'' Ms. Wilber said. ''Sharing my story helps me live with the consequences.''

Worcester Telegram & Gazette   Worcester, MA
June 13, 2004 Sunday, ALL EDITIONS

 Mass neglect; State has lowest safety belt use in country
 Pamela H. Sacks; TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

Sarah J. Metz cannot remember a time when her mother failed to ask whether everyone's seat belt was buckled before she shifted the car into drive.
Eric Fins' mother, too, made wearing a seat belt automatic.
It wasn't much of a stretch, then, for Sarah and Eric, who were members of Worcester Academy's chapter of Students Against Destructive Decisions, to stand in front of Walker Hall for several days last month stopping cars to see if occupants had their safety belts fastened. Those who passed muster got a key chain and nods of approval.
"It seems like a mindless thing, like second nature,'' Sarah said. ''But for those who don't wear seat belts, it's that thing they forget to do.''
Sarah and Eric, who graduated from Worcester Academy earlier this month, were among 50 members of SADD who took the matter of seat belts seriously this year. Among other things, they sold carnations for Valentine's Day with a bit of verse attached:

Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
Buckle up your seat belt,
Someone cares about you.

When viewed alongside smoking and substance abuse, neglecting to wear a seat belt may seem a benign transgression- that is, until you take a look at the numbers of deaths and catastrophic injuries suffered by unbuckled victims of motor vehicle accidents. Nearly 60 percent of the people killed in car and truck crashes in 2002- 32,598 men, women and children- were not wearing seat belts, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for those between the ages of 16 and 34, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet in 2002, 64 percent of people between the ages of 16 and 20 and 68 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 34 who were killed or seriously injured in car crashes were not wearing seat belts.
And the figures for Massachusetts are far worse. Eighty-two percent of people ages 16 to 20 and 83 percent of those 18 to 34 who were killed or suffered incapacitating injuries in 2002 were not wearing seat belts.
In fact, Massachusetts has the lowest safety belt use among 47 states that were compared by NHTSA. As of September 2003, the national rate of safety belt use stands at 79 percent. In Massachusetts, it is 62 percent.
'I think the way to sum it up is that Massachusetts has one of the lowest safety belt rates in the nation,'' said Brook Chipman, spokesman for the Governor's Highway Safety Bureau.
With that understanding as a backdrop, the teenagers at Worcester Academy played a role in a broad and ongoing campaign conducted over the last two years. It involved government and private agencies, businesses and individuals, all of them determined to make seat belt use universal.
The approaches range from NHTSA's ''Click It or Ticket'' campaign, a multimillion-dollar nationwide media and law-enforcement blitz, to a school curriculum and video competition co-sponsored by Volkswagen and Scholastic Inc. to a book on safe driving for children from ages 7 to 14 written by a construction mogul from Atlanta who lost a great-nephew in a car crash.
The efforts appear to be having an effect. The U.S. Transportation Department announced last month that seat belt use is up 7 percent among people ages 16 to 24 and 4 percent among all age groups.
Sarah and Eric, who are both 17, and two of their classmates gathered recently in a lounge at Worcester Academy to talk about their seat belt campaign. Worcester Academy was one of 75 Massachusetts schools receiving grants to promote safe driving. The students expressed the view that young people fail to fasten seat belts in part because they feel invincible.
''Their attitude is, 'We're young. We can heal easily,' '' said Dan Adams, 18, who served as president of SADD for the school year that just ended.
"They don't think they have to do it when they're just going down the street to visit a friend or to the store,'' remarked Kali Patrick, 18.
Eric said he had the sense while he was surveying cars last month that most people caught without safety belts were embarrassed. ''Our message is simple: 'Be safe,' '' he said.
With all the other pressures brought to bear, it is parents who play a key role in developing good seat belt habits among children.
A recent survey of 731 fourth- and fifth-graders and 329 of their parents found that the children of parents who always wear seat belts are nearly three times more likely to buckle up.
''The time-tested mantra that 'actions speak louder than words' clearly held true in our study,'' said Dr. Peter Erlich, a pediatric surgeon at the University of Michigan, who conducted the study.
Allen S. Hardin, who retired several years ago as president of Hardin Construction Co., a nationwide builder, is convinced that parents need to start early to instill safe driving habits in their children.
Mr. Hardin credits his father for his own accident-free record. His desire to safeguard his three grandchildren prompted him to write his book, ''Drive Like a Champ: A Safe Start to Driving Smart,'' which is aimed at children before they reach driving age. The death of Mr. Hardin's 18- year-old great-nephew in a car crash only made the task more urgent.

The book, which is in a colorful cartoon format, features a dog named Champ. It has 40 driving tips told in rhyme. The fourth tip starts by urging its youthful readers to ''Always, always, always buckle up, so you will be safe like our good driving pup.''

''One of the things we are trying to focus on is that parents need to get involved in talking about driving before their children can drive,'' Mr. Hardin said by telephone from Atlanta. ''It's part of parenting to take an active part in talking about driving.''
A couple of years ago, Volkswagen was seeking a way to provide community service. One look at the statistics on teen deaths in motor vehicle accidents- 10,000 in 2003, according to NHTSA- and the company knew it had found the right cause, said spokesman Tony Fouladpour.
''We wanted to change the perception that it's not cool to wear a seat belt,'' Mr. Fouladpour said. ''We wanted to try to help make seat belt usage cool.''
Volkswagen formed a partnership with Scholastic, which publishes books and educational materials for children. Together, they created a classroom kit for Grades 9 to 12 that teaches a variety of communication skills. The companies also set up an annual contest challenging students to make a 30-second public service ad aimed at persuading teens to use seat belts.
Volkswagen and Scholastic invited 14,000 schools in 10 metropolitan areas, including Boston, to participate. This year, they received 350 entries, up 150 from last year. The three finalists will be announced in the fall on a national TV show- last year it was ''MTV Total Request Live''- and the public will vote on the winner.
"The ones we have found compelling clearly show teens talking to teens about why it is necessary and cool to wear seat belts- or how dumb it is not to,'' Mr. Fouladpour said.
The students at Worcester Academy said they tended toward a soft sell on seat belts because people, particularly teenagers, don't like to be told what to do.
''We tended to keep it lighthearted,'' said Kali.
''Yeah. We'd say, 'You could die, ha, ha,' '' Eric said with an ironic laugh.
Massachusetts residents generally have reacted with hostility to being told to wear seat belts, said Mr. Chipman of the Governor's Highway Safety Bureau. For that reason, public service ads were always couched in polite terms.
Yet focus groups that were consulted before designing the state's latest $900,000 ''Click It or Ticket'' campaign indicated a preference for a tough approach.
"What they said is, 'If you want me to do something, just tell me straight out what you want and tell me what will happen if I don't comply,' '' Mr. Chipman said.
The campaign spot, which ran from May 24 through June 6, showed a half dozen drivers, from young to elderly, making excuses about why they are not wearing seat belts. Then a stern- looking officer holding a $25 ticket says: ''It doesn't matter what your excuse is. Safety belts are the law in Massachusetts. 'Click It or Ticket.' Massachusetts is serious about saving lives.''
''We did have an 11 percent increase in the first year of 'Click It or Ticket,' '' Mr. Chipman said. ''That is very motivating. With 'Click It or Ticket,' we've honed our message.''
Massachusetts is hampered in enforcing seat belt use because it is one of 29 states with a so-called secondary law, one that does not permit officers to issue tickets for seat belt violations unless they have first pulled over a vehicle for some other reason.
For those states with a ''primary'' law, which allows an officer to stop a car solely for lack of seat belt use, the rates of use are, for the most part, substantially higher, including California, at 91 percent; Oregon, at 90 percent; Indiana, at 82 percent; and Iowa, at 87 percent.
It is no wonder, then, that 50 Massachusetts health and public safety agencies have formed a coalition called Seat Belts Are for Everyone to get a primary law passed.
The measure died in the House on a tie vote, but there is a move afoot to have it reintroduced before the end of the current legislative session, according to Gloria T.A. Craven, a policy strategist and coordinator for the SAFE coalition. She said that the Senate and Gov. Mitt Romney support the bill.
It is not a hard sell, Ms. Craven said, because, aside from reducing pain and suffering, seat belt use comes down to a matter of dollars and cents.
Anyone who is in a serious car crash unbelted stands a good chance of being ejected from the vehicle. The results are often serious brain or spinal cord injuries. In 2000, of the 1,127 people who were admitted to Massachusetts hospitals with brain or spinal cord injuries as a result of car crashes, 97 percent were not wearing seat belts.
In Massachusetts, people tend to survive those types of injuries because of the sophisticated emergency response system. Yet the damage often is permanent and, within a year, many victims end up on Medicaid. Their ongoing care costs the state tens of millions of dollars a year. Of those victims in 2000, 43 percent are now on Medicaid.
''The cost is borne by all of us,'' Ms. Craven said.

The Boston Herald Boston, MA
June 11, 2004 Friday

Disabled costing Medicaid $1.9B
By JENNIFER HELDT POWELL

Ray, paralyzed in a car accident three decades ago, would be in a nursing home if not for the help he gets from the state's Medicaid program.
Instead, he works, attends church and serves on a couple of town committees.
Yet the cost of care for people such as Ray is ballooning the state's Medicaid budget, a report to be released today asserts.
The number of people with disabilities covered by Medicaid has increased by 13percent since 1999, but the cost of their health care has gone up by 45 percent, to $1.9 billion, according to the study by the Massachusetts Medicaid Policy Institute.
The challenge is curbing costs without hurting the people who need care or shifting the costs, said Nancy Turnbull, a principal contributor to the report.
``This population is not very well understood, but it is growing,'' she said.
She said she hopes the report will spark a public debate about the issue and potential solutions.
There are about 200,000 people with disabilities receiving Medicaid services. Many can go to school or work only because of the extra help they get from Medicaid.
Ray has health insurance, but it won't cover the aides he needs to get him out of the house in the morning and back at night. The state pays for that.
Cutting services to save money would most likely shift costs to other programs, the report says.
Asking beneficiaries to pick up more of the cost is difficult because most have very little money.
A better alternative is to find new ways to manage care, control prescription costs and take advantage of federal aid, the report argues.
The state is already working on some of those solutions, said Ron Preston, state Health and Human Services secretary.
``People with disabilities really do want to be in the community, and that should be a broad social goal,'' he said.

Lowell Sun Lowell, MA
June 11, 2004 Friday

Hudson crash kills driver
 JACK MINCH, Sun Staff

http://media.mnginteractive.com

Hudson police Sgt. David Bianchi examines the wreckage of a 2001 Lincoln LS which was involved in a fatal crash this morning. SUN/JACK MINCH HUDSON, N.H. A 22-year-old man died after the car he was driving crashed into three granite boulders at the corner of Dracut Road and Ponderosa Drive early this morning, according to police.
Police did not release the man's name.
The man was driving southbound on Dracut Road when he lost control of the 2001 Lincoln LS he was driving, police said. The car slid sideways after cresting a small rise at a bend in the roadway approaching Ponderosa Drive about 1 a.m., according to Lt. Robert Tousignant.
"He actually slid sideways driver side of the vehicle and the rear of the vehicle struck the wall" on Ponderosa Drive, Tousignant said.
The rear end was accordioned to the rear wheels and the seats inside were pushed together. The driver's door also sustained heavy damage in the crash.
The force of impact pushed a granite boulder about 3 1/2 feet by 6 feet that was stacked on a low-lying boulder.
"Moved it by the looks of it about six feet by the center of mass," Sgt. David A. Bianchi said.
Glass showered a Mercury Grand Marquis LS parked behind the boulders in the yard at 1 Ponderosa Drive.
It took firefighters 50 minutes to free the driver because the crash was so severe. He was the only person in the car.
The driver was taken to St. Joseph Hospital in Nashua where he died, according to Tousignant.
The car's speed was a factor in the crash, Bianchi said. Its speed was still under investigation and not available this morning.
The Fire Department referred questions about the crash to the Police Department.
It was unclear this morning whether the man was wearing a seat belt.  "I have [the technical accident reconstruction unit] down there putting the whole thing together so it's still under investigation at this point," Tousignant said.
It did not appear as if airbags were deployed. Air bags usually deploy for front-end collisions, not rear collisions, he said.
"Given the impact, it kind of surprised me," Bianchi said. "Even though they have them in the front of the car, I'd expect the force of impact to activate the sensors."
There were several eyewitnesses, whom police interviewed, Tousignant said.

Pass mandatory seat belt law this summer
The Standard-Times on June 11, 2004. 


We're at crunch time. The Senate is considering adding to the Transportation bond bill the mandatory seat-belt legislation.
It's now been more than five years since an ever-expanding coalition of police officers, health care workers and other advocates have been arguing for this measure.
It is difficult to understand why the Legislature has not passed this common-sense measure already. Instead, it died in the House last year with a tie vote and can not come up again until the new session begins next year, according to House procedure. That is unless, it is included in the transportation bond bill that is passed this summer.
We believe we shouldn't wait another year for this measure. It should pass as part of the bond bill.
The twenty states in the country with mandatory seat-belt laws that allow police to stop and fine someone for not being buckled up have some of the highest rates of seat-belt usage in the country. That translates directly into fewer highway fatalities and far fewer seriously injured drivers and passengers who may need costly, state-supported healthcare for the rest of their lives.
The ugly fact is that people without seat belts get thrown in bad accidents. They are then very likely to receive severe head and spinal cord injuries that alter a person's life forever.
Massachusetts spent more than $38 million in 2000 on state-supported care for some 1,100 people who suffered head and spinal cord injuries in car accidents that year alone.
Massachusetts is at the bottom of the nation in seat-belt usage. Too many Bay Staters stubbornly continue to drive unbuckled.
State Sen. Mark C. Montigny is one of the lead sponsors of the mandatory seat-belt law. And he is pushing for it to be added to the transportation bond bill now in his committee on long term debt. Sen. Joan Menard is also a strong supporter.
These senators know that unbuckled motorists are dying every week in this part of the state. We had seven auto accident fatalities last November in SouthCoast and each person had failed to wear a seat belt.
Under the current law, police officers can only ticket someone for not wearing a seat belt if they stop a vehicle for another reason and happen to notice a person unbuckled.
We need a mandatory law to help change attitudes. A mandatory law makes the strong statement that we're all in this together. The entire state is hurt when people don't wear seat belts. We all end up paying for the injured.
States with mandatory laws have seen 11-percent to 15- percent increases in seat belt use in the first year alone.
We could use that improvement here in Bristol and Plymouth counties where only 20 percent of those who died in car crashes in 2000 were wearing a seat belt, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
If the Senate approves the seat- belt law as part of the transportation bond bill this month, it will then go to conference committee for inclusion in the package that goes to the governor's desk. We urge you to contact your senators and House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran who will be involved with the conference committee on the transportation bond.
Let's not wait another year when we can prevent deaths and injuries by taking this sensible step this summer.

It's time to stop the bleeding.
The Standard-Times on March 7, 2004

It's all about choice, right? A personal freedom to opt not to wear your seat belt?
Half of the state's drivers and occupants contend that their choice doesn't affect anyone else but them. As public safety experts, we know that nothing could be further from the truth.
Massachusetts is bleeding both physically and fiscally because of the lack of an effective seat belt law.
Nationally, the average seat belt use is about 75 percent. In Massachusetts, it's only about 52 percent -- and it drops for young adults to about 35 percent.
Further, adults who don't buckle themselves up don't buckle up their kids.
Ten years of data from our own Department of Public Health illustrate that for kids, the results of unbelted crashes are severe and often result in disabling injuries.
Families are emotionally and economically destroyed when someone is seriously injured in a car accident and it is even more tragic when it could have been prevented.
Seat belts reduce your risk of death in a motor vehicle crash by 45 percent and reduce your risk of being seriously injured by 55 percent. Because of our low usage rates, in the year 2000 every teenage traffic fatality was an unbelted crash.
Here's the newest data. We know that car crashes cause projectile injuries, moving a person's body violently forward, backward and sideways when unbelted. The potential for two disabling injuries occurs in this situation every day in Massachusetts. Both traumatic brain injuries and spinal cord injuries are the most devastating disabilities that result from unbelted car crashes.
In 2000, the Division of Health Care Finance and Policy and the Department of Public Health Injury Surveillance Program shared with us that there were 1,027 new traumatic brain injuries that resulted directly because of car crashes. Scientific studies corroborate that when these injuries occur, more than 97 percent of the adult victims were unbelted at the time of the crash.
The Division of Medical Assistance gave us actual hospital admissions data indicating that there were 41 admissions with absolute spinal cord injury diagnoses, 140 fractures to the base of the skull and another 244 vertebral fractures that may or may not have had lasting spinal cord damage in 2000. Simultaneously, there were 534 pediatric admissions resulting in 128 or 24 percent "serious injury" hospital admissions. For children, please understand that more than 99 percent of kids suffering spinal cord injuries from motor vehicle crashes are unbelted victims. This is not an injury/disability that occurs when drivers and passengers are belted. If you survive an unbelted car crash, you are likely to sustain an extremely serious disabling injury, are often between the ages of 17-34 and are likely to incur substantial health care expenditures over the course of your lifetime.
We are bleeding. An injury from an unbelted car crash is predictably more severe, requiring longer hospital stays and more surgeries. When first responders respond to the scene of unbelted car crashes we are dealing with the worst possible situations. When victims are thrown from the car, we need to find bodies on the sides of the roads. As professional firefighters, we witness the devastation and the bleeding first hand.
We are bleeding fiscally as well. What are the estimated costs for these injures and who pays the bill? We all do. Unbelted car crashes affect all of our wallets, as there is a direct impact on our taxes in sustaining a continually expanding Medicaid budget.
Massachusetts Medicaid spent about $6 million in 2000 alone, in the emergency hospital care for eleven percent of the crash victims who were Medicaid beneficiaries coming into the emergency room with spinal cord injuries and traumatic brain injuries. What's the extended impact on Medicaid? 43.9 percent of all the crash victims that year required specialized and costly ongoing care after hospital discharge. 11.8 percent required a rehabilitative phase before discharge to home or another institution. Some 17.7 percent were directly admitted to a tertiary setting that provides long-term care. Conservatively, it is estimated that 70 percent of all these victims became Medicaid dependent within the first year of their injury. In short, these preventable injuries are causing us to bleed fiscally.
Massachusetts has more than 3,000 traffic violations on the books that are primary enforcement civil infractions. The Massachusetts seat belt law is the only traffic violation that is considered "secondary enforcement" whereby an officer must pull you over for another traffic violation first, before enforcing the seat belt law.
Making all traffic violations subject to primary enforcement sends a clear public message that the state considers seat belt use necessary for the safe operation of a motor vehicle. Under the provisions of this bill, you could not be arrested for a seat belt violation or have your car searched due to the failure to wear the belt. There are no insurance surcharges for this violation. It is a simple $25 fine, proven to work in the 20 states that have primary laws.
Those of us on the front lines, responding to crashes and taking care of trauma victims find the evidence so compelling. Primary laws dramatically increase seat belt use and if you wear your seatbelt your chance of getting seriously hurt is half of what it is without the seatbelt. We have speed limits to prevent drivers and others from being injured. We should have a primary seatbelt law to reduce deaths and injury, to spare families the heartache and expense and to decrease our state's Medicaid expenditures. We all ultimately suffer without this preventive public health and public safety measure.
Please join us in telling our Legislature to pass a primary seat belt law and to "stop the bleeding."
Jim Allen, New Bedford Firefighter
Gary Souza, Fairhaven Police Chief

This story appeared on Page B2 of The Standard-Times on March 7, 2004.

Study: Cost of treatment reduced by seat belt use
By RAY HENRY, Standard-Times staff writer

NEW BEDFORD -- Since the majority of state legislators appear unmoved by the loss of life suffered by motorists who don't wear seat belts, a lobbyist group said it now hopes money will hold more sway.
"We know that death is not a salient point," said Gloria T.A. Craven, a lobbyist for Seat belts Are For Everyone, a coalition of 46 groups pushing for a primary seat belt law in the state. 

Right now, Massachusetts police can only ticket motorists who don't wear seat belts if the drivers break other laws first. Attempts to change the law have so far failed, Ms. Craven said.

After the deaths of unbelted motorists, including seven local residents in November and December alone, the SAFE coalition is presenting legislators with information detailing the millions taxpayers spend every year caring for unbelted crash victims who suffer brain or spinal injuries.

Only 51 percent of all drivers wore their seat belts regularly in 2002, the second lowest reported rate in the nation, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. Fairhaven Police Chief F. Gary Souza believes the rate of use in his town is even lower.
The costs for initial hospital care of unbelted victims with spinal or traumatic brain injuries costs Medicaid, a state financed health plan, an estimated $5.9 million a year, SAFE members said.

But the costs grow sharply with time. Nursing homes, rehabilitation facilities and personal care attendants can cost an additional $32.6 million annually, Ms. Craven said.

Studies -- and anecdotal stories -- show the severity of injuries can be reduced with seat belt use, said Yvonne A. Michaud, a trauma outreach nurse at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
In fact, research conducted at the hospital, which has recently treated several local residents after crashes, shows that 76 percent of unbelted accident victims suffered severe injuries compared to just 24 percent who did buckle up. The study was conducted between July 2001 and June 2002.

On average, treatment for unbuckled patients runs $6,000 more than their buckled counterparts, the SAFE coalition said.

This story appeared on Page A3 of The Standard-Times on February 19, 2004.

THE BOSTON GLOBE

Doctor campaigns to tighten seat belt law
Buckle-up rate here is lowest of 47 states
By John Ellement, Globe Staff, 11/18/2003

To doctors and nurses who treat the shattered bodies in emergency rooms and console the relatives of those they could not save, allowing police in Massachusetts to stop a driver solely for not wearing a seat belt makes common sense, potentially saving both tax dollars and lives.

"It's time for the carnage to end," Dr. James A. Feldman, an emergency room doctor at Boston Medical Center, said yesterday as a national law enforcement campaign got underway to crack down on seat belt and child safety seat violations during the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.

Feldman, along with a representative of emergency room nurses and
transportation safety advocates, pointed to a federal study that found that only 51 percent of Massachusetts drivers used a seat belt in 2002, the lowest among 47 states studied. Feldman said research shows that so-called primary seat belt laws, which are on the books in 29 states, boost seat belt use by 15 percent.

Feldman, who also chairs the Massachusetts chapter of the public health committee of the American College of Emergency Room Physicians, said a primary seat belt law should be adopted in Massachusetts.

Such a law was defeated by a tie vote in the state House of Representatives in May. It would have allowed police to stop a car if they suspected a seat belt was not in use. Currently, police must have another reason, such as running a stop sign, before they can stop a car.

Feldman said a new study by the National Safety Council shows that if
Massachusetts had had a primary seat belt law since 1995, when the National Transportation Safety Board first backed the idea, 157 lives would have been saved.

Feldman said non-belted survivors of crashes cost Massachusetts taxpayers and insurance ratepayers more in hospital bills, and $80 million could be saved in the state with a primary seat belt law.

In 2000, he said, all of the teenagers killed in crashes in Massachusetts did not have seat belts on at the time of the collisions. He also said research shows a parent who does not buckle up in the car is less likely to make sure his or her children are safely secured in a motor vehicle.

In Taunton earlier this month, a child who was two weeks shy of his second birthday was killed and his 4-year-old brother seriously injured when they were involved in a three-car crash. Neither one of the children nor any of the adults in the car were wearing a seat belt, authorities have said.

And on Nov. 3, eight people not wearing seat belts were ejected from a van that swerved to avoid another vehicle and flipped over on Interstate 93 in Wilmington. The driver and front seat passenger, both wearing seat belts, were unhurt, but the eight people thrown out of the vehicle needed medical treatment.

A spokeswoman for Governor Mitt Romney said yesterday that he supports a primary seat belt law. Nicole St. Peter said the governor believes it is "fundamentally unfair to ask those taxpayers who wear their seat belts to shoulder the increased costs of medical bills of those who intentionally choose not to buckle up."

But the Taunton Democrat who helped kill the bill this May said he has not changed his mind. Representative James H. Fagan said the measure would create a "Gestapo state" by giving police too much authority. "This is one more attempt to reduce our constitutional protection to be free from unlawful search and seizure," Fagan said.

The state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union shares Fagan's concerns. Carol Rose said that in other states the primary seat belt law has been used as a pretext for racial profiling. Rose said a public education campaign on the benefits of seat belt use is a smarter, better way to improve highway safety.

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

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