Third Of NYers Killed In Crashes Not Wearing Seat Belts: Report

NEW YORK — As of Nov. 1 in the state of New York, all passengers in motor vehicles who are over the age of 16 will be required to wear a seat belt. Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation Aug. 11 that put that mandate into effect.

Previously, the law said that passengers ages 16 and older were only required to wear a seat belt if they were in the front passenger seat next to the driver.

In signing the bill, Cuomo said that it's been known for decades that seat belts save lives and prevent needless tragedies.

"It was under my father's leadership that New York became the first state in the country to pass a seat belt law, and the nation followed his lead," he said in a news release. "Now we are building upon this legacy and helping to create a safer and stronger Empire State for all."

According to information from the state Department of Motor Vehicles, when the the first mandatory seat belt law went into effect in 1984, only about 16 percent of people buckled up. More than two decades later, in 2008, compliance was up to 89 percent.

An analysis by CoPilot, a car shopping app, of seat-belt use statistics collected in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, found that 7.3 percent of New York adults do not always use seat belts. They make up 30.3 percent of people killed in New York car accidents.

There were 549 people killed in car crashes in New York who weren't wearing restraint devices from 2016 to 2018.

The study also drilled down to the metro level and found that in the New York-Jersey City-White Plains area, 7.9 percent of adults don't always wear a seat belt, with 30.4 percent of unrestrained occupants killed in car crashes. Between 2016 and 2018, 121 people who weren't wearing seat belts were killed in car crashes.

In the United States, the study found, 6.3 percent of adults don't always wear a seat belt. The total number of people who weren't wearing seat belts who were killed in car crashes in the U.S. was 46.7 percent. There were 38,752 unrestrained occupants killed in car crashes between 2016 and 2018 in the country.

For more information on the study, including the methodology, go here.