Recent research has indicated that car crash victims who wear seat belts show better chances of recovery even from the emergency rooms than those who don’t.
The research has revealed that of the 24,000 car accident patients, brought to the ER, the victims without seatbelts were three times more likely to die in the hospital than those with seat belts.According to Shane Allen and his colleagues at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee two-thirds of patient deaths in the ER could be accounted to the unbelted crash victims. Besides that their needs for further treatment were also three times higher than the seat belted victims.
The results of the study were published in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine after reviewing data on 23,920 Wisconsin residents, treated in the ER for car accident injuries in 2002.
5,300 of these car crash victims were without seatbelts at the time of the accident. In addition they were more frequently found to be male, or to have been drinking before the accident.
Unbelted car occupants who survived the car crashes were found to have sustained severe injuries to the head, spine, abdomen or other body regions.
The results of the study have called for tougher seatbelt laws with more U.S states having primary-enforcement seatbelt laws whereby police can pull drivers over for seatbelt violations alone.
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