In January 1975, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation and communications began to develop and implement a program to inform the public of the benefits of seat belts as a road safety countermeasure. This program was to be of substantial scale and comprehensive multi-faceted approach. The intent was to provide the evidence of seat belt effectiveness in a variety of forms, so that it could be absorbed into the popular wisdom over a period of a year or so. The program was intended to be empirically evaluated to the maximum extent possible, within time and fiscal constraints. The program scale and the time constraints combined to pose a most interesting evaluation problem. In November, 1975, the Ontario government announced mandatory seat belt legislation, which came into effect on January 1st, 1976. Subsequent evaluative efforts concentrated on assessing the impact of this legislation, interaction of the effects of legislation with the earlier information program and with the reduction of speed limits, which occurred simultaneously. The paper outlines the measuring instruments used. The interim evaluation of the information program and the early effects of the regulatory changes are discussed.
Samenvatting