Obese Are Not Wearing Seat Belts in Auto Accidents

Eddie Farah

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Often we write here about a person's failure to wear a seat belt as being a contributing factor to injury.

It's tough to figure out why people wouldn't wear a seat belt knowing your chance of surviving an auto accident is greatly increased. A new study sheds some light on that.

Vanderbilt University researchers say some of you aren't wearing seat belts because not all carmakers are making them big enough to be comfortable. Seat belt use actually declines as girth increases.

The standard is supposed to be that a 215 pound man be accomodated by a seat belt. But that standard hasn't changed for four decades and people have just gotten bigger during that time.

The researchers say 19 percent of the population may be bigger than that.

Only about 70 percent of extremely obese individuals reported always using a seat belt, while nearly 83 percent of normal-weight people always used their belts, the study found. More than half of those killed in auto accidents weren't wearing seat belts, according to the latest federal figures

Seat belt extensions are not always considered to be reliable and some foreign car makers do not even provide them. Sounds like another good reason to stick to that New Year's resolution.

The study's findings are published in the journal Obesity.