A research conducted by SIPSiVi in 1998 in North Italy shows a lack of knowledge of the Italian drivers about the seatbelt law and rules, so the recent introduction and enforcement of this law in Italy seems not to be very effective. According with our hypothesis, Italian drivers do not have a particular resistance to the road safety rules, but the lack of respect of road laws seems to be associated with the inconstancy, incongruent and non co-ordinated intervention of the police officers: for instance, the control of speed limit violations in Italy, counted on the number of fines given, is equivalent with the French one, while the fines for unfastened seatbelt in Italy is greatly smaller than in the other European countries; therefore the Italian drivers have never developed the behaviour to fasten their seatbelts. In fact, as long as the officers do not constantly use the seatbelt, they do not strongly believe in the enforcement of this rule with drivers. Since it has been demonstrated that the personal perception of the need of using the seatbelt is often undertaking the real risk while driving, it has been necessary to develop a method to enhance and make more constant the use of the seatbelt by the police officers. Results of a recent study show that in June 1999 only 4% of officers used seatbelts, whereas in June 2000, 35% of officers used seatbelts; thus showing a significant increase in the use of seatbelts among police officers as drivers and passengers. The following observation of the seatbelt behaviour conducted in October 2000 shows that the percentage increased to 60%. It is noted that the increased percentage of seatbelt behaviour among the police officers almost coincides with the opinion of the citizens; in fact, 64% of the road users think that the seatbelt behaviour among the police officers has significantly improved. For the covering abstract see ITRD E122795.
Samenvatting