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The paper at hand deals with issues arising from inflated values of safety belt use. The paper addresses and evaluates data leading to strong evidence that safety belt use rates, as reported in crash records, are inflated irrespective of reasons. Equally strong evidence is found that belt use inflation introduces significant distortions in the estimation of casualty rates, and of the effectiveness of various restraints. The cited effects are evidenced both analytically and by reviewing crash records. No fully satisfactory remedy is yet at hand for controlling the cited distortions. However, a heuristically determined blanket deflation appears to rectify most of the ill effects of belt use inflation. It also appears that blanket remedies for belt use inflation, intended to cure inflated values of restraint effectiveness, may introduce adverse side effects on the cited effectiveness.

This investigation addresses and evaluates: (a) the frequency of air bag deployments in comparison with belt only protection or no restraint, as a function of calendar year and model year; (b) injury and harm rates as a function of crash severity and restraint use and type; (c) restraint effectiveness in reducing fatalities and injuries as a function of restraint, crash severity, type of impact, and car size; (d) the confounding effects of crash severity; (e) injury patterns by injured body region, injuring contact, and injury severity; and (f) variation of injury patterns as a function of crash severity. It is found that restraints, irrespective of type, appear to be more effective at higher injury severities; the lowest casualty rates, and highest effectiveness values, are associated with the use of an air bag plus safety belt, or safety belt without air bag deployment; the air bag even without the concurrent use of a safety belt appears to offer a certain crash protection.