The attitude of young people towards the risk and motivation of the of seat belt use

Abstract

Introduction. Road accidents are one of the main causes of the public health sector problems and death cause among young people aged between 18 and 24 years old. Traffic accidents kill 1.2 million people every year and injury or disability more than 50 million people. They are the second leading cause of death globally among young people aged 5 to 29 years. Safety devices are very important in our everyday life. Many accidents happen every single day and proper use of safety restraints have saved many lives. It is important to recognize the importance of wearing one and the necessity of proper use of seat belts. Material and methods. The present research is an observational study on the attitude towards the use of seat belt among the young people in Chisinau municipality, in the period of September - November 2018. The goal of the study was to assess the attitude of young people towards the risk and motivation on the seat belt use. It was applied a questionnaire of 28 questions to 262 young students at Nicolae Testemitanu SUMPh aged between 18 to 29 years old. Results. The analysed data show that 45% of students do not have a driving license, and 55% have a driving license category B. More than 1/3 of students who have a driving license when they drive a car always wear a seat belt (81,3%), in most of the cases - 7,3%, seldom - 4,2% and never - 7,2% of cases. During the last 30 days, at least once 1,2% of students driven a car under the influence of alcohol, 0,38% - 6 times. It is worth mentioning that 1/2 of interviewed students din not drive a car or other vehicle after they had consumed alcohol. From the total number of interviewed students 17,7% were subject to penalties for breaching the traffic rules, the majority of violations being related to: high speed (60,8%), prohibited parking (19,6%), not wearing a seat belt - 19,6%. TV/radio shows (50%), online social networks (42%), educational programmes (7%) and newspaper/magazines (1%) are the main information sources mentioned by the respondents. Conclusion. Though the majority of young people realise the benefits of a wearing a seat belt regardless of the place one is sitting in car and they use it when driving a car, nonetheless the seat belt is not used at 100%. It is necessary to strengthen the joint efforts in increasing the use of seat belt by disseminating the information on the passengers’ safety in a car. The behaviour of each individual towards personal safety depends on his own attitude, the knowledge acquired and their application when using a car.