Right, time for some "excel maths" 💻 📈 - in 1 month, in Devon and Cornwall, the police found 2,239 cases of drivers and passengers not wearing seatbelts.
5% of those cases were CHILDREN not wearing seatbelts. In some cases, in the article, it's children, on the lap of the person in the front seat of the car, without a seatbelt.
Terrifying. But if you use some basic assumptions using the BBC published data for Devon and Cornwall, it gets really scary.
Devon and Cornwall pop (google) = 1.38M people
Seatbelt offences in 1 month (BBC) = 2,239 (NOTE - this actually was only in 3 areas of the two counties, but I'm using it as a proxy for the entire county...so could be undercounting 🤷♂️ )
Offences per capita for Dev + Corn = 0.019
Apply that rate to UK pop as whole = 1.3M people per year driving, or being driven, without seatbelts...
Of which....63,387 would be children.
Fatality rate of people in accidents who aren't wearing seatbelts (The Zebra) = 47%
Median cost of "severe" injuries due to a road traffic accident (I'm assuming if the people not wearing seatbelts don't die, the remaining 50% would have severe injuries) (https://lnkd.in/eHwv_5_C) = 41,202 Euro / £37,726 - (although the data suggests that 25% of people had costs over £100k)
Cost of severe injuries that could in theory be non-severe if seatbelts worn = £53Bn per year.
We're worrying about trying to stop people smoking outside (full disclosure: not a smoker, obviously smoking is bad for you and bad for the health system) when we have millions of people, including thousands of children, driving around with a 50% fatality rate if they get into an accident.
This is a public health issue surely, given where the costs land (NHS)?
#health #seatbelts #campaign
https://lnkd.in/eV-2CkgN
