Films Steer Us Wrong on Seat Belts, Study Says

Over the years, the entertainment industry has been accused of glamorizing excessive smoking, drinking, violence and sex. Fasten your seat belt, Hollywood: Here comes the latest campaign to clean up your act.

A study from St. Louis University’s School of Public Health suggests that the film industry is promoting another bad habit: driving without a seat belt.

The study published last month in the American Journal of Public Health found that movie characters are far less likely to wear seat belts than real-life Americans.

Researchers watched 198 top-grossing movies released between 1978 and 1998 and found that characters shown driving or riding in vehicles wore seat belts only 30% of the time.

In the real world, Americans buckle up about 70% of the time. The number is close to 90% in California, where drivers can be cited for not wearing seat belts.

The lead researcher for the study, Heather Jacobsen, suggested that by depicting film characters barreling down the street sans safety belts, the film industry is missing an opportunity to promote good driving habits.

“We think that the cumulative effect of seeing little or no seat belt use in movies may be to distort viewers’ perception of social norms,” she said in the study.

Hollywood has a long, proud history of featuring irresponsible driving habits. Remember Burt Reynolds in the 1977 cross-country speed fest, “Smokey and the Bandit”? And then there were those Cheech and Chong flicks that featured the two protagonists trying to drive in a car clouded with marijuana smoke.

Not much has changed. One of this year’s top-grossing movies is “The Fast and the Furious,” a film set in Los Angeles, in which street toughs adapt Japanese sports cars into muscle cars and race them illegally--usually without buckling up.

But Jacobsen said she was stunned to find seat-belt use also lacking in such family movies as “Space Jam,” “D2: Mighty Ducks” and “Jungle2Jungle.” That’s right, even Disney movies got caught with their belts down.

“In my mind, almost every movie [we saw] could have been a better example of wearing a seat belt,” Jacobsen said.

Her study found that seat belt use in movies did not exceed 10% until around 1987--about the time that most states began to cite drivers who failed to wear seat belts. Since then, seat belt use in films has fluctuated between 10% and 30%, she said.

Oddly enough, Jacobsen’s study found that female characters buckled up almost twice as often as their male counterparts. Also, safety belt use in family movies was about twice as high as in other movies.

Jacobsen’s study did not include movies that had an X or NC-17 rating. Also excluded from the survey were cartoons, period pieces and films set outside the United States.

Groups that promote safe driving habits have rallied around the message of the research. Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the American Automobile Assn. say the popular media--particularly the film industry--should try to be a good influence on drivers, especially youngsters.

“Teenagers are seeing all the racing movies, and they can see that these people are not belted,” said Sheila Sarkar, a professor at the California Institute of Transportation Safety at San Diego State University and an expert on teenage driving habits.

No one disputes the benefits of wearing a safety belt. Motorists are twice as likely to die in a serious crash if not buckled up.

Studies show that men under the age of 25 are least likely to wear seat belts. By coincidence, that is also one of the most sought-after demographics for movie makers.

Tina Pasco, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of MADD, said her group pressured the film industry several years ago to stop glamorizing drunk driving. Maybe it’s time, she said, for someone to push Hollywood to change the way it depicts the use of seat belts.

“It doesn’t cost a film company anything to get an actor to put on a seat belt,” she said.

Chuck Hurley, vice president of transportation safety at the National Safety Council, said the film industry could influence the habits of some motorists, but he believes the best way to increase the seat belt use is to require it by law.

“I don’t believe that if every person in the movies wore seat belts, that would significantly increase seat belt use,” he said.

Perhaps that is why the study barely raised a shrug in the movie industry. A spokesman for the Motion Picture Assn. of America declined to comment, saying each movie studio is free to portray characters as it pleases.

Several individual movie studios, including Disney, declined to comment about their movies and even refused to discuss the topic in general terms.

A spokeswoman for Warner Bros., the studio that made “Space Jam,” defended the movie, which mixes live action and animation in a family-oriented film starring basketball legend Michael Jordan. She conceded that the movie contains a scene in which Jordan and another character are riding without seat belts in an older model car.

But the spokeswoman said another scene clearly shows a youngster in a van wearing a seat belt.

“I don’t believe the producers were being irresponsible,” she said.

Researcher Jacobsen said she can only speculate why movie characters rarely buckle up. She said one friend suggests that actors don’t wear seat belts in movies because in real life they are usually chauffeured around in a limousine.

A more likely reason may be that many driving scenes are filmed in a studio or on a car that is pulled on the back of a flatbed truck.

Sarkar, the San Diego State professor, said the problem may be that no one has ever pressed Hollywood on the matter.

“If someone brings it to their attention that this is irresponsible, they will change,” she said.

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