TECHNICAL SUMMARY

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), Indian Highway Safety Program sponsored a project to (a) establish the first baseline tribal reservation safety belt use rate, and (b) develop a methodology to use in the future to track trends and specific program effects. This is similar to NHTSA’s National Occupant Protection Usage Survey (NOPUS), a probability-based survey that reports a single belt use rate for the nation. The goal was to gather a single belt use rate for tribal reservations that could track progress towards increasing belt use.

Although there are over 560 federally recognized tribes, approximately 180 of these reservations within the 48 contiguous States have safety belt use subject to tribal law and tribal traffic law enforcement. The populations of tribal reservations differ markedly. Socially and culturally, tribal reservations can be classified according to their geographic areas. They are Northwest (Washington State, Oregon, and Idaho), Northern Plains (Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota), Southwest (California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico), Great Lakes (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio), South Central (Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana), and South and East (all remaining States excluding Hawaii and Alaska). Within these regions, 61 reservations have populations of 2,000 or more, which represents 660,000 people or 93 percent of the population on tribal reservations. Native Americans make up 61 percent of the population on all tribal reservations.

Figure TS-1. Areas of Tribal Reservations

Because tribal reservations set their own safety belt laws, there is much variability. Some tribal reservations have no safety belt laws, some have a primary law, in which motorists can be stopped solely for safety belt violations, and other reservations have a secondary law that allows a law enforcement officer to ticket people for a safety belt violation only if they were stopped for another infraction. In addition, reservations exist within the context of the safety belt laws governing the States within which they are located.

Methods
The sampling plan was designed to provide a reliable estimate of belt use across all the tribal reservations subject to tribal law and tribal traffic law enforcement. The sampling procedure weighted all tribal reservations proportional to their populations, and included the criteria that the sample of the tribal reservations:

• be limited to tribal reservations with populations of 2,000 or more;
• represent varying conditions;
• be from all areas of the country; and
• include enough sites per reservation so that the final combined safety use rate would be reliable.

The objective was a sample from each area at a rate approximately 1 in 4 reservations or 1 reservation per 30,000 population. The planned sample included 18 reservations with 150 sites on these reservations. However, the Navajo reservation in the Southwest, which has 22 percent of the total Native American population, did not permit safety belt observations to be made in its territory. Ultimately, data were collected from 120 sites on 16 tribal reservations.

Results
Safety belt use on tribal reservations subject to tribal law and tribal traffic law enforcement was observed between September and November 2004 (15 reservations) and in February 2005 (1 reservation). Overall, 44 percent of the vehicles were cars, 31 percent were pickups, 14 percent were SUVs, and 10 percent were vans. Fifty-eight percent of the drivers were male, 38 percent were female, and the sex of 3 percent could not be determined (does not sum to 100 due to rounding). Fifty-three percent of the passengers were female, 37 percent were male, and the sex of 10 percent of the passengers could not be determined. Belt use could be coded for 90 percent of the drivers and 83 percent of the passengers.

For the tribal reservations subject to tribal law and tribal traffic law enforcement, excluding the Navajo, the overall safety belt use rate was 55.4 percent. There was a very high variation in belt use across reservations, ranging from a low of 8.8 percent to a high of 84.8 percent.

There were significant differences in belt use by vehicle type and occupant sex for drivers and passengers, consistent with patterns seen in State and national belt use results. Rates were higher for cars (58.8%), SUVs (62.1%) and vans (57.5%) and much lower for pickup trucks (48.1%).

Males were less likely to use safety belts than females, 52.3 percent versus 60.3 percent. Drivers were somewhat more likely to be belted, at 56.6 percent, than passengers at 51.3 percent were. The lowest overall belt use rate was for male passengers in pickups, at just 39.1 percent. The highest rate was for female drivers of SUVs, 67.7 percent belted.

Belt use also varied consistently with road type. Within towns on collector roads, overall belt use was
59.0 percent, while rates on more rural between-town arterials was 51.0 percent.

Three of the areas had multiple reservations. The Northern Plains area had the five lowest belt use rates and averaged just 27.6 percent belt use across all five. Great Lakes and Northwest had the highest belt use; 3 of the 4 reservations in those two areas had the highest individual belt use rates observed. Of the 5 reservations in the Southwest, 3 had moderate belt use figures, while the other 2 had rates above 75 percent, among the highest for tribal reservations.

Another indication of belt use is the kind of safety belt law. There are two kinds of belt use laws that may affect use rates: the safety belt law of the reservation itself and the safety belt law of the State in which the tribal reservation is located. Data were examined in both ways. Nine reservations had primary safety belt laws; in them, 68.6 percent of vehicle occupants were belted. By comparison, 3 tribal reservations had secondary belt laws; they averaged 53.2 percent belt use. For the 4 reservations with no belt use laws of any kind, only 26.4 percent of the vehicle occupants were belted.

In addition, 9 reservations were located in States with primary belt use laws. Those 9 reservations were the nine with the best use rates; they averaged
72.8 percent belted occupants. The remaining 7 reservations, in States with secondary belt use laws, were the lowest-usage reservations. They averaged just 33.3 percent buckled occupants.

Overall, safety belt use in tribal reservations subject to tribal law and tribal traffic law enforcement varies greatly. The recorded figures ranged from less than 10 percent to almost 85 percent, a difference so large as to make it unmistakable that different reservations are fundamentally different in their approach to and success at encouraging safety belt use.

Conclusions
This is the first time safety belt use has been systematically measured across a representative sample of Indian reservations. The procedure is well documented, and it can be replicated in the future to provide a moving picture of safety belt use in Indian Country. It will be a useful tool in measuring the results of safety belt initiatives.

Safety belt use in Indian Country varies greatly from tribal reservation to tribal reservation. Figures ranged from less than 10 percent to almost 85 percent, a difference so large as to make it unmistakable that different tribal reservations are fundamentally different in their approach to and success at encouraging safety belt use.

The tribal reservations with the highest belt use rates had rates comparable to general U.S. belt use rates, so it is clear that Native American governments can be effective in achieving high levels of belt use. Figures for other tribal reservations suggest that their governments have done little or nothing toward achieving high belt use. Reservations with primary safety belt laws had the highest use rates, followed by reservations with secondary safety belt laws; reservations with no safety belt laws had the lowest use rates. Adding any safety belt law, and changing a secondary law to primary, have been shown for States to lead to increased safety belt use, and upgrading the belt laws in tribal reservations lacking them could “kick-start” improvements in belt use.

NHTSA is funding two initiatives to raise the belt use on tribal reservations. First, a law enforcement liaison has been hired by the BIA’s Indian Highway Safety Program to promote tribal law enforcement support for occupant protection laws and increasing enforcement efforts in conjunction with NHTSA’s Click It or Ticket mobilizations and on-going traffic safety enforcement efforts. Second, the BIA will conduct a demonstration project to develop, test and evaluate program strategies that can be used in grant solicitations to fund occupant protection projects in Indian Country. This model program will identify the best mix of activities that have the greatest potential to work in tribal communities to increase safety belt use.

The limitations of this study include the nonparticipation of the Navajo reservation, which represents almost a quarter of the population of the tribal reservations subject to tribal law and tribal traffic law enforcement.