The purpose of this project was to determine the levels of practice of health and traffic safety behaviors during the period 1985-1992, and determine the trends that have occurred over that period. From the original index - Prevention Index - two sub-indices were developed. A Health Index and a Safety Index. The Safety Index reflects the level of practice of three safe driving behaviors (wearing safety belts, avoiding drinking and driving, and observing the speed limit), and the Health Index reflects health habits such as not drinking, not smoking, exercising, dieting, etc. The principal results showed that there is only a weak association among the individual health behaviors, among the individual safety behaviors, and between the two sets of behaviors. Over the eight year study period the improvement in health habits has been practically insignificant, whereas the improvement in safety habits has been substantial and statistically significant. The greatest and most consistent increase was in the use of safety belts, with the reported percent who use it all the time increasing from 42% in 1985 to 72% in 1992, ie a relative increase of nearly 75%! There was also a consistent but smaller positive trend in refraining drinking and driving. (A)
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