In this paper the results of the first two nationwide road side surveys on seat belt usage in Belgium are presented. These surveys were set up in the framework of the 'General Assembly on Road Safety' and commissioned to the Belgian Road Safety Institute in order to monitor seat belt wearing rates on a yearly basis. The first of these surveys was conducted in May 2003 ; the second measurement took place in May 2004. In the first part of this paper, the methodology in designing these projects will be presented. Special attention will be given to the sampling design (clustering, stratification) that was used. The second part of this paper will be devoted to the model building process, for which a logistic regression adapted to survey data was used both in a single-level and in a multilevel setting. Preliminary analysis of the data showed that drivers and passengers do not behave differently with respect to seat belt behaviour, the main individual difference being due to the gender of the car occupants. As for the aggregated variables regional differences account for some variation as well as the year of measurement. (Author/publisher)
Abstract