This document reports information on the KPI safety belts and child restraint systems (CRS), which is defined as the percentage of vehicle occupants using the safety belt or child restraint system correctly. By preventing or reducing injuries caused by crashes, correct safety belts and CRS usage is indicative for road safety. Seventeen Member States provided data on this KPI, and the figure below provides a comparison for occupants of passenger cars during weekday/daytime. It breaks down the share of correct usage of seat belts by position in the vehicle (but some positions are only delivered by some Member States). Germany and Sweden are marked differently as they selected measurement locations non-randomly, as did Denmark and the Netherlands, but the latter two are not in the figure as they provided different aggregates: regarding all days of the week combined, 97% of the drivers and 89% of the rear passengers in Denmark used the safety belt correctly, and 96% of all occupants combined in the Netherlands. The share of rear occupants correctly using a safety belt shows to be lower than that of any front occupants, which shows that a breakdown between front and rear occupants provides additional insight.
Included in the report are also the share of children (correctly) using CRS, and a breakdown by road type. The share of children (correctly) using CRS according to roadside observations starts at just above 35%, hence it is recommended to keep this KPI. The breakdown by road type shows that the share of correct seat belt usage by drivers and rear occupants in passenger cars is highest on motorways and least on urban roads.
Figure 1. Percentage of passenger car occupants correctly using the safety belt during weekday/daytime by position in the vehicle
