Message to Minnesota's Legislators -- Get 'Er Done!

Guest Editorial by Carol Bufton, President of the Minnesota Safety Council, and Randy Williams, President of AAA Minnesota/Iowa

MINNEAPOLIS, Oct. 20 -- It's not often that policy-makers can pass a bill that will reduce death and injuries, save huge dollars, land a big federal grant, and cost almost nothing. Passing a primary seat belt law would do all those things. Here's the case for why that is so.

We saw it in the newspaper recently, but it feels like old news. Healthcare costs in the Midwest went up an average of 12.5 percent last year; double digit increases -- again. Health insurance premiums are expected to take a big hike this year, bigger by far than the growth of our economy and of our paychecks -- again.

Policy-makers are working to rein in rising costs by focusing on the delivery side of healthcare. Good. We need to do that. But that only addresses a piece of the problem.

Richard Carmona, the U.S. Surgeon General, said we won't succeed at healthcare cost containment until we switch from a treatment to a prevention orientation. That's good advice for policy-makers, and it's good advice for each of us. It's obvious -- if we don't require healthcare, we don't incur costs.

Unintentional injuries are a key reason people enter the healthcare treatment system. Every year, one in four of us is injured seriously enough in an accident to seek medical treatment - and motor vehicle crashes are a major cause of those injuries. Further, traffic crashes are the leading cause of injury death on and off the job in Minnesota and across the nation.

There's a simple step that everyone who rides in a motor vehicle can take to reduce deaths, injuries and medical costs, and it doesn't cost a dime -- buckle your seat belt.

Seat belt use reduces the risk of serious injury or death in a crash by 40-60 percent. Minnesota crash victims who don't wear seat belts can see medical bills that are at least 50 percent higher than those who buckle up.

What's the surest way to get everybody buckled up? Upgrade Minnesota's seat belt law to primary enforcement. That means everybody in every motor vehicle buckles up every time, and law enforcement officers are allowed to enforce the seat belt law just like they do every other law on the books.

In state after state, passing primary enforcement seat belt laws has resulted in immediate and sustained increases in seat belt use. Twenty-two states plus the District of Columbia now have primary seat belt laws. Seat belt use has increased an average of 11 percent in those states.

So what would we expect to see if Minnesota strengthens its law to primary enforcement? Seat belt use would rise to about 93 percent, and stay there. That would result in about 50 fewer people dying and 1,000 fewer serious injuries a year. It also would mean an estimated $113.6 million cost savings a year, including medical bills, lost wages, lost tax revenues, legal fees, and more.

Congress has passed legislation to add even more incentive to get a primary seat belt bill passed. In a provision of the surface transportation reauthorization act, known as SAFETEA-LU, Minnesota would receive a federal grant of more than $15 million for highway safety improvements simply by upgrading our seat belt law to primary enforcement.

If you're keeping score, that's lives saved, injuries reduced, big dollars saved and a hefty pot of money for needed highway safety improvements -- at virtually no cost to our state -- just by passing a primary seat belt law.

Some Minnesota policy-makers have been resistant to taking that simple step in spite of all those benefits and national surveys showing that better than 80 percent of Americans support primary seat belt laws. So, here's the message to policy-makers: Upgrade Minnesota's seat belt law to primary enforcement in the 2006 legislative session. Let's "Get 'er done!"