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Life Guide U.S. essentials
English

Wear a seatbelt in every seat, front and back

  • Top value
  • Evidence A
  • Buys life
  • Free
  • Takes minutes
  • No willpower

In plain words

Buckling up in the front seat roughly halves your chance of being killed in a crash. In the front of a light truck it cuts the risk by about 60%. Of the people who died in U.S. cars in 2022 whose belt use is known, half were not buckled up.

Cost

Free. 2 extra seconds each time you get in the car.

What you get

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that seatbelts lower the risk of fatal injury for front-seat car occupants by 45%, and by 60% in the front of light trucks. Among people killed in passenger vehicles in the U.S. in 2022 whose belt use is known, 50% were unbelted. The World Health Organization (WHO) puts it as seatbelts cutting the risk of death for vehicle occupants by up to 50%. WHO estimates that 248,099 people died in road crashes in China in 2021, or 17.4 per 100,000 people

Notes

Buckle up in the back too. In the same report, 60% of people killed in the second row were unbelted. The 45% and 60% figures are NHTSA estimates calculated from crash databases (citing Kahane 2015), not results of randomized trials. The WHO death toll for China is modeled, and several times higher than the number recorded by Chinese traffic police. The two count different things; only the WHO figure is used here.

Evidence grade
A : Specific numbers from meta-analyses, large cohorts or randomized trials; for law and policy, the statute or official text.
Sources
  1. NHTSA (2024). Occupant Protection in Passenger Vehicles: 2022 Data (DOT HS 813 573). https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813573
  2. WHO (2025). Road traffic injuries fact sheet. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffic-injuries
  3. WHO GHO RS_196/RS_198 (China, 2021). https://ghoapi.azureedge.net/api/RS_196?$filter=SpatialDim%20eq%20%27CHN%27

Translated from the Chinese original. Original book, section 1, tip 1. This section is about health and medicines. It is general information, not a substitute for a doctor’s diagnosis or prescription. Content may be out of date and rules differ by place. When you actually deal with an agency, a doctor or a court, follow what local officials, doctors and lawyers tell you. Disclaimer