t t e, 1962 Safety Experts Find "The More You Value Seat Belts The Less You Will Use Them" Do you believe there is a big risk driving in to-day’s heavy traffic? Do you believe in the safety value of car seat belts? If the answer to both questions is “yes” you are less likely to have seat belts installed in your car. So says the National Safety Council after an extensive study of why the majority of the driving public rejects this proven safe guard. The following is the result of the to the entire population — though Council’s pilot study and the nation- | that may be the case—but rather wide survey made by the Creative Research Associates of Chicago. 1. People know the value of seat belts and, paradoxically, that is the main reason they don’t buy them. 2. The more dangerous a person thinks driving is, the less likely he is to get seat belts. 3. The stereotype of the seat belt user as some kind of a nut, or a sissy, or an old fuddy-duddy, is fading fast. 4. People resist seat belts because of two powerful psychological forces: fear and guilt. 5. The most common defense against getting seat belts is a “pre- tended ignorance” of their value. In an exploratory study, under contract with the United States Bureau of Public Roads and in co- operation with the President's Com- mittee for Traffic Safety, the National Safety Council undertook to discover 1) the nature and degree of seat belt resistance, and 2) the most effective communication approaches to overcoming the re- sistance. After conducting a pilot study, the Council engaged Creative Research Associates, Inc. of Chicago to con- duct a nationwide survey. In the first phase of this project, 150 drivers—75 men and 75 women —were interviewed in four areas: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles. The 17-page, in-depth in- terviews lasted from one to two hours. (Of the 150 randomly sel- ected drivers, eight turned out to have seat belts.) We do not say that the results of the study can be validly projected | that with our sample we tried to discover some of the psychological dynamics at work. We know that over 95 per cent of the passenger cars in this country do not have seat belts. Thus, we might have expected that drivers in our sample would at least state that they do not greatly value seat belts. The reverse hap- pened. Most of the respondents readily talked about the value of seat belts in clear-cut and know- ledgeable terms. They talk a very good game. Over 96 per cent of our sample was capable of accur- ately stating the value of seat belts. A surprising result. All respondents in our sample psychologically associate seat belts with serious accident involvement. Seat belt users, non-seat belt users, people who view driving as fairly - safe, people who view driving as dangerous, all associate seat belts with unusual and extreme situa- tions (although they differ in how they fantasize the outcome of seri- ous accidents). Everyday use and routine circumstances tend to be absent from perceptions of the value of seat belts, For everyone, then, the mental association with seat belts is danger—violent danger. Thus the knowledge of the func- tion of seat belts and intellectual belief in their value is accompanied by deeper concern over the danger implied by seat belts. This fear is accompanied by a feeling of guilt about avoiding seat belts (their value being known, as noted above). The result is the set- SAFETY BRIEFS New Poison Danger Wisteria plants are definitely not for eating, reports the National Clearing House for Poison Control Centers. Several children who ate wisteria pods, or eyen a couple of seeds from a pod, became acutely ill, exhibiting vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea and abdominal swelling. Wisteria, a climbing woody yine with purple flowers, previously was not known to be poisonous and little is known of its toxicity: “None of the vic- tims died,” said Dr. Luther L. Terry, surgeon general of the United States, “but wisteria ingestion can produce serious internal disturbances, and par- ents should caution children living in areas where wisteria grows not to eat any part of the plant.” E * x * Warning to Sailors Don’t scuttle your boat on the highway before you reach water. Here are tips from the National Safety Council on the safe towing of boats: @ Use a safety hitch which is required by law in most states. Check your hitch and tie-downs whenever you stop for gas.. @ Allow yourself extra room when you pass. Since your vehicle is about twice as long as before, you need double the space to get back in your lane. Also, your trailer adds weight which cuts your car’s speed during passing. @ Give yourself about one third more room to stop. At 50 m.p.h. under good conditions, your car needs about 20 car lengths to stop, but with a trailer it fakes 25 to 30 car lengths. e@ Be sure the trailer is equipped with a rear red light, visible for at least S00 feet; a reflector on each side, and a stoplight if the car's stoplight is obscured. @ All new boat trailers weighing more than 1,500 pounds loaded should have brakes on all wheels. 2 : Cowcatchers for Cars Your car of the future may have a “cowcatcher” on the front to cradle pedestrians should you hit one. This design would eliminate some injuries now suffered by 300,000 persons struck by cars every year, according to a new study by Cornell University Medical School, the New York City Police Department and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York. The study also showed that the pedestrian who is struck is usually at fault. In 147 of 191 such accidents the pedestrian violated a safety rule — mainly by “jaywalking,” either crossing against the light or between inter- sections, Also interesting was the fact that in 75 per cent of the fatal pedes- trian accidents, the victim had been drinking. 5s * Shine Those Floors If you don’t polish your floor after applying a buffing type wax because you're afraid a high-shine is slippery, you're dead wrong. So says Lucile Bush of the Johnson's Wax manufacturers. “The more you buff, the harder and drier and thus safer the surface becomes,” she says. “With too much wax ‘and limited buffing you get a soft, smeary coating which is not a safe walking . ” ‘She recommends using an electric floor polisher, rented if necessary. “And arns, “for oil softens wax and causes the finish * * can even be less dangerous than those from magazine, for a greater shock mav cause es, “throwing” the victim free from the elec- ting up of personal psychological defenses or rationalizations which in turn reinforce the seat belt avoidance. But these defenses are very weak. For the majority of the sample, the defense took the form of what we might call a “rationalization of ignorance”: they pretend to them- selves that they really don’t know enough about seat belts. If one can keep seat belts at a low level of awareness, one may excuse himself for avoiding them out of ignorance. For a minority the defense is an inversion of the value of seat belts: in an automobile accident a seat belt would be the responsibility agent for injury or death—it would “trap” me. To summarize at this point: all respondents in our sample asso- ciated seat belts with extreme acci- dent situations. The engendered fear is accompanied by feelings of guilt about not getting seat belts whose value they know and can describe. The fear and guilt result in the construction of personal de- fenses. For the majority, the de- fense is a pretended ignorance of the value of seat belts; for a min- ority, the defense is an inversion of the value of seat belts. Paradoxically, the driver most resistant to seat belts is the driver who tends to view traffic as rela- tively dangerous rather than one who tends to view it as relatively safe. The danger-oriented driver (in critical extremes, this would be para- noia: an exaggerated sense of danger from the external world, which is a projection of internal anxieties) is also the most insistent in trusting only himself in event of danger. Characteristically, this group tends most to reject seat belts as an ex- ternal, controlling agent. They seem to rely on themselves only and tend * to avoid being dependent on others. When asked if they usually prefer to drive or let another person drive, 73 per cent of the. danger-oriented group said they preferred to drive. Significantly, out of the eight seat- belt users in this first phase of the study, seven indicated that they do not mind having another person drive. Also, 85 per cent of the dan- ger-oriented group said seat belts were “very confining”, while only 15 per cent of the safety-oriented group thought seat belts were “very con- fining.” It is this danger-oriented SS) Gere | group that is most prone to the ex- treme form of inverting the value of seat belts, or perceiving them as dangerous: a threat to one’s capacity to help himself in time of danger. This does not mean that the per- son who values seat belts is not anxious, but that he is not unrealisti- cally severe in his assessment of the dangers of the driving world. In a sense, he must have faith in the func- tional value of laws and devices, the external factors that promise to miti- gate driving danger. On the other hand, to the more seat-belt resistant driver, traffic improvement and safety are perceived to be under the control only of the driver himself. If this simplified hypothesis be true, it indicates that one aspect of the_ psychological obstacle to seat belt purchase is the use (and need) for omnipotence on the road. If this sense of control is impaired, as with the prospect of seat belts, it is sensed that driving might become a threatening experience. This Is Why Laws Are Needed Several days after the accident that claimed the lives of his parents and his brothers and sisters, seven- year-old Randy still woke up crying for his mother, hospital nurses re- ported. After such a tragedy as this, one has little stomach for trying to assess blame. What good would it do? The father-driver is dead, and one should speak well of the dead. We're sure that if we had known him person- ally there would be many good things we could say. But following an accident of this nature it is the practice and duty of state officials to review the driving record. There it was in black and white: three previous convictions for speeding, one for making an illegal turn. Yes, there it was: the all-too- familiar violation-accident pattern, the reason why we need traffic law enforcement, an effective point sys- tem, and a program for dealing wisely but firmly with problem drivers. MANY VOICES HAVE BEEN RAISED ON BEHALF OF DRIV- ERS ALLEGEDLY PERSECUTED BY DILIGENT TRAFFIC OFFI- CERS. MANY HAVE CALLED THE POINT SYSTEM TOO HARSH. MANY HAVE, IN EF- FECT AT LEAST, DEFENDED A DRIVER'S RIGHT TO STRETCH THE SPEED LIMIT A BIT: WHAT'S THE HARM? AMONG ALL THESE VOICES CAN SOMEONE HEAR A LITTLE BOY CRYING FOR HIS MOTH- ER? —Wisconsin Traffic Safety Reporter Lighter Side One thing the compact car does is bring the family closer together. % te % When a young woman applied to the school board for a job, she was asked how long she intended to teach. “From here to maternity.” she replied. % te % Diets are for people who are thick and tired of it. ie we » A pessimist is usually a man who has lent money to an optimist. Be sd = Archeologist: “I've unearthed a well-preserved piece of Roman car- pentry.” ; Assistant Archeologist: “What are - the dimensions?” Archeologist: “IT by IV.” AUTOMOTIVE SAFETY ENGINEERS are plugging a new type car turn signal which will allow the car driver to flash all signals in unison as a warning to all traffic approaching from both directions that an unusual traffic hazard exists. LATEST IWA TURTLE CLUB MEMBER CARL JUBAS. Jubas, qa faller employed at Canadian Collieries Limited, Comp 1, Toba Inlet, is seen holding his Turtle Club rtificate while IWA Camp Chairman Art Thompson, centre, and Woods Foreman Larry Mitchell look on. Jubas’ life was saved by his hard hat when he was struck on the head by a falling limb. His only injuries were two small forehead bruises and a stiff neck. He was off work for five days but required no medical attention.