New York Seat Belt Overview
The primary laws behind New York’s seat belt laws are § 1229-d of the Vehicle and Traffic Law relating to the required use of seat belts, and § 1229-e which relates to child passenger safety restraint systems. These laws were both enacted as part of Chapter 504 of the Laws of 1984 and became effective on April 1, 1985.
New York’s Vehicle and Traffic Law is clear in both § 1229 and § 1229-e that these laws apply to both the driver and the front seat passenger. Also, these laws apply with equal force to operator and passengers of taxicabs, buses, emergency vehicles, type A school buses, and private motor buses. In fact, it would seem that the only vehicles exempt from New York’s seat belt requirements are mopeds and motorcycles.
The vehicle and traffic laws further provide that, "a driver, [or passenger], shall not conceal, tamper with, grab, hold, possess, receive, or remove a seat safety belt or safety seat, or a system intended for the purpose of holding a seat safety belt or safety seat in place during an accident or collision."
While § 1229-d requires that a driver and front seat passenger wear seat belts, § 1229-e says that children who are less than 4 years old and weigh less than 40 lbs are required to be restrained in a child safety seat . Further, the law provides that kids who are less than 7 years old and weigh less than 100 lbs are required to be either in a child safety seat or strapped into the vehicle’s lap and shoulder belt. Interestingly, the law provides that children who are 12 or older do not have to be strapped into the vehicle’s lap and shoulder belt. Now, it appears that legislators in Albany were intending to make parents responsible for whether or not their 12 year old should be strapped into the lap and shoulder belt, considering death rates for children aged 5-9 are more than twice as high as those for 10-15 year olds.
Consult Albany’s Legislative Memorandum regarding Chapter 504 of the Laws of 1984. This will show you that the politicians in Albany knew what they were doing and were aware of the consequences of what they were doing. This law was well thought out, and they should be held accountable when there is an automobile accident and their well thought out plan goes wrong. Yes, the bill allows an exception for "medical emergencies," definition of which is very clear and would most likely include stroke, seizure and heart issues. But it’s impossible to say what a "medical emergency" is at the moment it happens and, of course, everyone should be responsible enough to buckle up—but we also know that’s not always the case.
Backseat Seat Belt Application
All passengers in the back seats of a passenger vehicle are subject to New York’s seat belt law, codified at Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1229-c. The statute requires that every person above the age of four years who is being transported via the "backseat" of a passenger vehicle must wear a seat belt. The law specifically exempts from the requirement those patients for whose physical deformity or medical condition wearing a seat belt would "cause the driver of [the passenger vehicle] any avoidable physical pain or shall cause such patient any observable physical harm." Neither the statute nor the DOH regulations explain how to identify exempt patients. The seat belt law aims to protect from injury people who are ejected through a vehicle’s windows on impact with another vehicle. It does not apply, however, to occupants of "taxicabs, livery vehicles, emergency vehicles, buses, farm tractors, motorcycles, motor bikes and bicycles."
Penalties for Seatbelt Violation
The penalties associated with not wearing a seat belt in the back of the vehicle are harsh. The penalty for not wearing a rear seat belt is $50.00. For a second similar violation, it is doubled to $100.00, and for a third, the fine triples itself to $150. A no-seat belt violation carries three points as well. New York used to have no penalty of any kind or fines associated with the violation of the back seat seat belt law, however as of 2014, Governor Cuomo signed in to effect an expansion of the vehicle and traffic law to include this third seat belt law into the criminal code.
Seatbelt Use Benefits
Recent statistics show that by properly buckling up, you reduce your chance of dying or receiving critical injuries in a crash by fifty-percent. In all reality, this number would be even higher. In 2017, roughly half of the backseat motor vehicle fatalities were people not wearing seat belts. According to a study by BSIP consulting, some young adults driving and riding in the backseat buckled their seat belts just 27-percent of the time. Fatalities resulting from traumatic brain injuries are on the rise by 11 percent mostly due to unbelted rear seat occupants in the event of a car crash. Not only does this put the unbelted occupants at risk, but also everyone else inside the car, thanks to the added force being exerted by the elevator effect slam of the body into the next occupant. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated that proper backseat safety restraint usage has saved 63,500 lives between 2008 and 2016. The odds of receiving serious injuries reduces by 38 percent in non-crash accident conditions when in the backseat with a single rear occupant when you buckle up. Rear-end crashes have been known to cause more trauma than any other area. The majority of neck injuries sustained during a rear-end collision can be associated with unbelted occupants in the backseat, between 16-27 percent of the time. Proper use of safety restraints can lessen the probability of a second impact within the car and increase the chances they will remain in position. With the increasing density of vehicles, there is limited space for movement in the event of a car crash. Any vehicle has a very small area of appropriate movement during a collision. This creates what is known as the "crush zone." When unrestrained, the risk of being thrown forward increases by a landslide. Most have died or become incapacitated on impact due to the increase of force being applied to the body. This injury is commonly referred to as "submarining." Also, in approximately one third of all crashes, the unbelted rear occupant was ejected, killing him or her instantly. A majority of rear seat occupants killed in crashes could have survived had they worn their seatbelts.
Backseat Seatbelt Myths
While many parents are very diligent about making sure their children are properly restrained in a way that complies with New York State law, other people are not. In fact, some of the parents of teenaged drivers we have spoken with have told us they are unaware of the law and its safety implications. The backlash over the Backseat Seat Belt Law has been largely fueled by the perception of many people that the law is unfair or ridiculous because the backseat is, in some ways, a safer seat than the front passenger seat. It is important to be clear that the law does not state that the back seat is the most dangerous seat in the car; on the contrary, the law places the same requirements on all passengers because it is simply not safe to surge forward into the front seat in an accident at 30 miles per hour . While the front passenger seat provides a clear safety advantage over rear seats that are not equipped with head restraints and full seat belts, most rear seats do have head restraints. A passenger in a rear seat, therefore, is at a much lower risk of killing or injuring another passenger in the event of a 30 mile an hour crash. Consequently, even though the data shows that the front passenger seat is the safest seat, the snapshots from the fatalities and injuries from those rear seated occupants do not differ significantly.
Insurance and Liability Consequences
The presence or absence of seat belt compliance can have a substantial impact on insurance coverage and litigation expenses in the event of a motor vehicle collision. Most automobile insurance policies are written with requirements that the insured and all passengers will be seat belted whenever the vehicle is in motion. The failure to do so usually grounds an assertion of a reservation of rights with a defense under a "hazard" or "illegal act" exclusion in the policy. If the insured cannot demonstrate compliance with the policy requirements, the insurance carrier may not be required to defend or indemnify as to that claim. Liability may also be reduced to the extent that a violation of a legislative enactment is a "substantial cause" of the accident. In that regard, Insurance Law 5102(d) defines "serious injury" to include "a significant limitation of use of a body function or system." Failure to wear a seat belt in the rear of a vehicle may present a jury question as to the objective assessment of "significant," provided that a violation of the seat belt law is a substantial factor in causing the injury, such as by contributing to the failure of the pre-tensioner. "Substantial factor" has been defined to mean a factor which plays its part, even though it may have been felt to be insignificant at the time. It need not be the sole agency, but must be more than a slight, trivial, inconsequential, or negligible factor. Under existing case law, the original cause may be completely independent from or even later in time than the subsequent activator. Practically speaking, however, the limitations imposed by the "serious injury" threshold may preclude a finding of serious injury where the injury is captured entirely by the claimant’s pain and suffering element of non-economic loss (i.e., a permanent limitation of use of a body function or system). Whereas it has been established that the economy of the state requires fault, in order to allow the courts to sift such claims and prevent a burden on the judicial and insurance systems when the claim is for nothing more than pain and suffering, the burden is on the claimant to prove his or her claim falls within one of the six categories of serious injury.
Recent Changes and Public Awareness
In November 2016, the New York State Legislature amended the seat belt law (Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1229-c) to require that all passengers aged 16 and older in the back seat of a vehicle be restrained with seat belts. This expanded the scope of the law, which had previously required only passengers who were under the age of 16 to be buckled up in the back seat.
The law now states that every passenger of a motor vehicle more than 16 years old must be restrained by a seatbelt. Exceptions are made for "a person in a motor vehicle operated as an emergency ambulance by a certified person authorized under article thirty-seven hundred of the public health law," "a front seat passenger…" under certain conditions, and "persons with a physician’s written certification that they are unable to be restrained due to medical reasons." For any passenger under the age of 16, the law requires "that such person shall be restrained by a properly adjusted and fastened safety seat or safety belt in accordance with the child restraint systems and safety belt standards established by the federal government."
Under New York State’s Vehicle and Traffic Law, if a driver is exclusively at fault for an accident in which a passenger of any age is not wearing a seat belt, the recovery an injured passenger is entitled to is reduced by 25 percent, as compared to a claimant who was wearing their seat belt. This means that if that passenger were entitled to a recovery of $100,000, that amount would be reduced to $75,000. This rule can be extremely complicated in terms of settlement value. Just because a passenger did not wear a seat belt does not mean they will necessarily get no money. For example, if the accident is the sole fault of a drunk driver, clearly the failure to wear a seat belt does not prevent the defendant from being completely responsible . But if a passenger is drunk and the accident is the fault of the other driver, then the passenger clearly contributed to his or her own risk. If that passenger was wearing a seat belt, we could certainly argue that the passenger’s damages should not be reduced at all. The other issue that would arise is that some insurance companies refuse to pay any settlement unless a driver notifies them of the passenger not being seat belted. An argument can be made that they cannot condition payment on an action that does not have to be taken.
Raising public awareness about the new backseat seat belt law is left largely to the New York State Governor’s Traffic Safety Committee, which functions in part as the state’s Traffic Safety Resource Center for police agencies, schools, civic organizations, and other public officials. The Committee implements programs and policy initiatives to help New Yorkers become more aware of traffic dangers, injuries, and deaths. On August 27, 2017, the Committee began handing out "Play It Safe, Buckle Up!" pamphlets in Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester, and Kingston, New York.
Advocacy groups and organizations, such as the National Transportation Safety Board and DOT’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), also offer statistics on fatal accidents as well as detail accidents and fatalities that were caused by a lack of seat belt use. The groups and organizations do not often specify whether backseat passengers contribute to the number of traffic fatalities, though according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), almost half of the total car crash traffic fatalities are due to lack of seat belt use. In 2014, NHTSA estimated that unbelted rear-seat passengers aged 8 to 12 years accounted for a total of 92 lives lost, while unbelted teens aged 13 to 19 years years and adult back-seat passengers (aged 20 and older) accounted for 916 and 917 lives lost, respectively.