SEATBELT COMPLIANCE

Seatbelt compliance in Japanese women decreases when they become pregnant, bucking the world trend for increased seatbelt use in pregnancy. Prompted by the fact that pregnant women are exempt from seatbelt legislation in Japan, researchers decided to examine the factors that influenced seatbelt use in pregnancy. They not only found that compliance was low compared with use before pregnancy, but also that those who used their cars most were least likely to wear a seatbelt. Furthermore, only one in five of the sample realised the importance of wearing a seatbelt during pregnancy, leading the authors to suggest increased traffic safety education and revision of the legislation that exempts pregnant women from wearing seatbelts. (

)

INJURIES IN AMERICAN CHILDREN

Injury is the leading cause of death for American children under 15 years old, but these deaths are known to represent just a fraction of the number of children injured: for every paediatric injury death, there are about 1000 non-fatal injuries requiring emergency treatment. Researchers in Atlanta decided to analyse the causes of fatal and non-fatal injury in US children and found that motor vehicle crashes, suffocation, and drowning were …