‘It’s the Law’ : New Yorkers Buckle Up, Live Longer

Betty Shufelt had no idea she was about to become a footnote to a national policy debate when she hurriedly left a New York nightclub hoping to beat a storm back to her Vermont home.

Police had other plans. Ten minutes into the new year and only 15 miles from the state line, Shufelt became the state’s first motorist to be ticketed for failing to buckle a seat belt.

“I don’t like being forced to wear them, they’re too confining,” Shufelt complained. But “because it’s the law,” she seldom ventures into New York any more without buckling up.

Like the 29-year-old Vermont woman, most New Yorkers have accepted the law--the nation’s first--albeit grudgingly. And they have been amply rewarded.

By the end of January, the first month that the law was strictly enforced, New York had recorded its lowest highway fatality rate since 1926. Deaths dropped 45% compared to each of the five previous years. At the same time, surveys showed nearly 70% of New York motorists regularly using seat belts, up dramatically from the 15% recorded before the law.

Figures Being Analyzed

The latest figures still are being analyzed, but officials are confident that even if the sharp decline in highway deaths levels off, at least 300 to 400 lives will be saved this year.

“I always expected the results to be good eventually but I didn’t expect them to be this good this quickly,” said New York Gov. Mario Cuomo.

In taking the lead on the seat belt issue, New York’s efforts have helped to trigger similar laws in New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan and Missouri, most of which will not begin enforcement until summer.

Another 32 states are considering their own laws, including California, where Gov. George Deukmejian cited the New York experience in overcoming his long-held reservations about forcing people to use seat belts.

During a recent interview, Cuomo, who has taken a personal interest in the seat belt issue, said he has advised other governors that they “can get points politically” for enacting similar laws.

Defies Coincidence

“All you have to say is look at January and February, 1985, the total amount of deaths compared to 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago,” he said. “I am certain the dramatic difference will defy any suggestion of coincidence.”

It did not always seem that clear.

A bitter debate accompanied passage of the law, which provides fines of $10 to $50 for front seat passengers and children under 10 years who fail to buckle their belts. Critics conjured up pictures of an Orwellian society where only government knows what’s best for people.

What surprised officials most about the law’s initial success was the widely held belief that it would largely be ignored. How, skeptical New Yorkers asked, could police know for sure if someone is wearing a seat belt? And what hardened New York cop would waste his time lecturing a harried motorist on the finer points of traffic safety?

On a cold, blustery afternoon in Albany, New York’s capital, veteran Police Officer Frederick J. Briger Jr. agreed to show a curious reporter how it’s done.

Cruising though a neighborhood of old brick and clapboard houses, Briger, who leads his department in issuing seat belt summonses, spotted a small, white sedan, its telltale shoulder belt clearly dangling free behind the driver’s seat.

“Watch to see if she makes any sudden moves or tries to buckle her belt,” Briger said as he flipped on his red light and prepared to make the stop. Obviously convinced that a desperate act would be futile, the young motorist simply pulled to the curb.

‘I Feel So Foolish’

“This is the first time I’ve driven without it,” 20-year-old Joanne Amlaw protested as she stepped from the car. “I just left the bank and was making a lot of stops and I thought I wouldn’t get caught. I feel so foolish.”

Briger decided a warning would suffice, even though officers from his Traffic Safety Division--known locally as the “bumble bees with a sting”--have a reputation for citing 90% of the motorists they stop.

“It’s a law that the public is really not too happy with,” explained Briger’s boss, Inspector Robert Coleman. “By doing it this way, we show them we are not going to crucify them. We find that 90% of the time they follow along and we are able to win them over.”

During December, when the law first took effect, motorists were given warnings. But in the first full month of enforcement, the 620 state and local police agencies empowered to give tickets cited an estimated 4,500 motorists, nearly all of whom had been stopped first for another violation.

The introduction of the law was accompanied by public service announcements, street signs and a mobile device called the convincer, giving volunteers at shopping centers and other public places a jarring illustration of the impact of even a 5 m.p.h. crash.

All of this was designed to overcome a surprisingly strong wave of public opposition that greeted the measure’s adoption.

Assault by Mail

Within days of signing the bill, Cuomo’s office was inundated by mail bitterly attacking the governor for breaching personal freedoms. An estimated 5,000 letters were received and fewer than 50 had anything good to say about the law.

“They were offended,” Cuomo said of the letter writers, adding with a smile that the most defiant were “NRA (National Rifle Assn.) hunters who drink beer, don’t vote and lie to their wives about where they were all weekend.”

New York Assemblyman Vincent Graber, who sponsored the legislation, said he received about 2,000 critical letters, many from well-educated professionals. “Every day there were letters to the editor,” he said. “Hate letters came to my house telling me I was a Nazi.” At one point, Graber said he was forced to call in the state police after receiving a bomb threat scribbled in crayon.

Yet even before enforcement began, police noticed seat belt use edging up to about 45%. The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that seat belt use averages only about 15% nationwide, and that full compliance would reduce serious injuries and deaths by up to one-half.

More recently, officials say they have begun to see growing public support which is expected to become stronger as motorists realize the benefits, including a likely reduction in auto insurance premiums.

Variations in Compliance

Still, there are wide variations in who is complying. Preliminary studies indicate that women and those with higher incomes and more education are most likely to use seat belts. Ironically, use appears highest in rural areas where opposition was strongest--a result no one seems able to explain.

In places like Manhattan, where speeds average only a few miles per hour and traffic cops patrol on foot, it seems that the surest way of spotting out-of-towners is to look for motorists obeying the law.

Many drivers can be seen with their shoulder harnesses buckled behind them so that from the rear it appears they are belted in. Others have joined in the latest fad--T-shirts with diagonal strips of seat belt material, making the job almost impossible for even the most observant police officers.

Indeed, it appears there are no bounds to the inventiveness of New Yorkers intent on getting around the law.

“There, we do it like this,” a Brooklyn woman explained as she demonstrated how she pulls her shoulder belt to about chest level, holding it there with her thumb. It was only inches away from the clasp but there was a kind of satisfaction in knowing those few inches stood in the way of submission.

Police Have Tricks Too

“They try everything to beat (the law) when the simplest thing is to buckle it up,” said New York Highway Patrolman Tom McGrath, a 12-year veteran who spends each day on Brooklyn’s expressways.

The police, too, have their tricks. In Manhattan’s south patrol area, officers were trying to discourage prostitution on the city’s Westside by giving out dozens of seat belt tickets to customers of prostitutes, most of whom apparently leave their seat belts unbuckled.

That practice, however, was quickly halted for fear of a civil rights suit. “We had a couple of enterprising officers,” said Police Lt. Thomas Fahey. “Before we got our asses hauled into court, we thought we’d better cease and desist.”

The few researchers who have studied the New York experience agree that both its successes and failures are likely to be duplicated in other large states--like California--should they enact their own seat belt laws.

But the future of the seat belt movement has been clouded by an intense lobbying effort touched off last July when U.S. Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole announced that states with two-thirds of the nation’s population must enact seat belt laws or auto makers will be forced to install air bags or other passive restraints in all new cars.

Auto companies, which have been fighting air bag rules for a decade, are pumping an estimated $15 million into efforts to pass the laws. Several large insurance companies, hoping to profit from lower injury and death rates expected from air bags, have formed their own coalition to fight the auto makers.

Backlash to Lobbying

At least eight states have killed seat belt bills, some as a backlash to the lobbying and others because of resentment over federal interference.

Elsewhere, the lobbying has succeeded.

Michigan, for example, home of the big auto makers and sensitive to their recent economic troubles, passed its seat belt law largely because of a lobbying blitz by a Detroit coalition backed by a long list of the state’s most powerful figures. In Illinois, the auto companies hired a former majority leader of the state’s House of Representatives and an influential ex-senator to head up the effort.

The lobbying took a new direction in Missouri when a seat belt bill got caught up in the state’s efforts to win General Motor’s new high technology assembly plant for its proposed Saturn cars.

Likewise in California, where the state also is bidding for a General Motors Saturn plant, Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Van Nuys) raised eyebrows when he cast a deciding committee vote for a seat belt measure, saying he hoped GM would reciprocate by keeping open the Van Nuys assembly plant in his district.

Several members of the same committee earlier had been treated to expense-paid trips to Detroit. Even so, observers believe the intense lobbying in California is likely to end in a stalemate.

‘Seat Belt Blues’

Meanwhile, a New York lawmaker has introduced a bill to repeal its seat belt law. And at the 21, a favorite Albany hangout for lawmakers and influential lobbyists, a singer is hoping to cash in on the national trend with his version of the “Seat Belt Blues.”

What worries New York officials most, however, is the knowledge that in the 30 or so countries where seat belt laws have been tried, initial successes were followed by a slump in use as police turned to more pressing matters and motorists unconsciously fell into their old habits.

In Canada and Great Britain, where seat belt laws have been in effect for several years, researchers also found that deaths and serious injuries did not decline as much as hoped, primarily because the drivers most likely to get into serious accidents are the ones least likely to obey the seat belt laws.

William G. Rourke, director of Cuomo’s Traffic Safety Committee, said he is optimistic. But he believes the time may come when police will be called on to be more hard-nosed about seat belts.

“We’ve been using the light approach,” Rourke said. “We think we get better response. But the public has to know there is enforcement.”