Cape Town investing in campaign as city finds that only a quarter of motorists buckle up.
|||Only a quarter of Cape Town drivers buckle up, and only 8.3 percent of back seat passengers use seat belts.
Yet wearing a seat belt reduces the risk of fatal injury by up to 50 percent for drivers and front-seat passengers, and by up to 75 percent for rear-seat passengers.
Children, in particular, are vulnerable when they are not strapped in, said Transport MEC Robin Carlisle at the launch of a R5 million campaign in Bellville on Thursday. “Buckle up, it only takes a second to save a life,” the campaign states.
“Research has shown that increased seat belt compliance would save thousands of lives. Failure to use a seat belt is a route to death or serious injury during collisions,” said Carlisle.
A study by Stellenbosch University’s Emergency Medicine Unit had shown that only 25 percent of city motorists wore seat belts.
“Most severe injuries were sustained by those who were not wearing seatbelts at the time of the collision,” said Carlisle.
“It comes as no surprise that Cape Town residents have such a poor record in terms of seat belt compliance, as the fatality rate in the city accounts for nearly half the road deaths in the province.
“Road fatalities are the greatest single cause of death in children under the age of 12 and most of them were not buckled up.
Buckling up is known to reduce the risk of death in passenger cars by up to 80 percent.”
Professor Sebastian van As, head of the trauma unit at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital, said 250 children died each year because they were not strapped in.
“Yesterday we surgeons, nurses and theatre staff were busy for hours as we worked on a child who was not strapped in.” -Cape Argus