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The Best Way to Survive Your Thanksgiving Drive:
Buckle Up America – Every Trip, Every Time.

Whether you are traveling across town or across the country, it is always essential to wear your seat belt.

• Thanksgiving weekend, millions of Americans will hit the roads, eager to spend time with family and friends. It is one of the busiest travel times of the year, and unfortunately, that means more crashes.

• The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is reminding everyone that seat belts save lives. Buckling up gives you your best defense against injury or death in a crash.

• In 2012, there were 21,667-passenger vehicle occupants (in passenger cars, pickup trucks, vans, or SUVs) killed in traffic crashes in the United States. More than half (52%) of those who were killed were not wearing seat belts.

• NHTSA estimates that seat belts saved the lives of 12, l74 passenger vehicle occupants age 5 and older in 2012. However, if everyone had worn their seat belts on every trip that year, an additional 3,031 lives could have been saved.

• The facts do not lie: when you wear your seat belt as a front-seat occupant of a passenger car, your risk of fatal injury goes down by 45 percent. For light-truck occupants, that risk is reduced by 60 percent.


Make this Thanksgiving different from years past.

• During the Thanksgiving holiday weekend in 2012 (6 p.m. on Wednesday, November 21, to 5:59 a.m. on Monday, November 26), there were 301 people killed in traffic crashes across the nation.

• Tragically, 60 percent of those killed were not buckled up, representing a decline in seat belt use compared to the same weekend in 2011, when 51 percent of those killed in traffic crashes were unrestrained.

• Nighttime is deadlier than daytime in terms of seat belt use. Over the 2012 Thanksgiving weekend, 64 percent of passenger vehicle occupants killed in crashes at night were unbuckled, compared to 45 percent during the day.

• These numbers are even worse than the year before. Throughout the 2011 Thanksgiving holiday period, 57 percent of the passenger vehicle occupants killed in nighttime crashes was unbelted, while 40 percent of those killed in daytime crashes were unbelted.

• Young people continue to be overrepresented in fatal crashes and seat belt nonuse. Among the passenger vehicle occupants killed in crashes in 2012, occupants ages 21-24 were unrestrained at a rate of 63 percent, with occupants 16-20 following close behind at a rate of 60-percent unrestrained.

• Males are more likely than females to be unrestrained in fatal crashes. Fifty-six percent of the male passenger vehicle occupants killed in crashes in 2012 was unrestrained, compared with 43 percent for females.

• If you are ejected from a vehicle in a crash, odds are that you will not survive. In 2012, almost 8 out of 10 (79%) of the people totally ejected from vehicles in crashes were killed. Wearing your seat belt is the most effective way to prevent ejection; only 1 percent of occupants wearing seat belts were ejected in crashes, compared to 30 percent of those who were unrestrained.

• Surviving your Thanksgiving drive this year—and making it to next Thanksgiving—can be as simple as buckling up. In the last decade, seat belts saved the lives of more 100,000 people in the United States. Those people are thankful they wore their seat belts.

Buckle Up America – Every Trip, Every Time.