Automotive Coalition Announces New Target for Traffic Safety: Tweens

Fatalities and Serious Injuries Hold Stubbornly Steady for Age Group Despite Gains Elsewhere

ARLINGTON, Va., Feb. 15 -- The Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety (ACTS) is opening a new front in the battle to get children buckled up: a focus on "tweens," the one age group in which traffic fatalities and serious injuries held stubbornly steady between 2002 and 2003 even as they dropped for children overall. The announcement comes as the nation marks Child Passenger Safety Week (February 13-19).

ACTS announced today the creation of pilot programs in Dallas, TX, and Joplin, MO, to test strategies for increasing proper restraint use among children 8 to 12 years old, a demographic dubbed "tweens" by marketers. As passengers, these children are quite literally in between when it comes to traffic safety -- growing out of booster seats but still too young for the front seat.

Between 2002 and 2003, the latest years for which statistics are available, as the number of deaths and incapacitating injuries in fatal crashes dropped for children ages 4 to 7 and ages 13 to 17, the number remained flat for tweens. What's more, the number of deaths and incapacitating injuries among tweens who failed to buckle up rose 6% while it dropped in other age groups during those years.

"We have made enormous progress with younger children and with teen drivers, but we have not yet put an equivalent focus on tweens," said Christene Jennings, the director of programs at ACTS. "These pilot projects will begin to change all that. What we learn in Dallas and Joplin should help us make an impact across the country."

ACTS is teaming with social marketing experts from the Washington-based Academy for Educational Development to help local partnerships study tween attitudes and behavior, then develop ground-breaking behavior-change campaigns that will be launched in the summer. ACTS is helping fund implementation of the programs with $30,000 grants each to the Southwest Missouri Community Alliance in Joplin and the Injury Prevention Center of Greater Dallas.

For years, traffic safety initiatives have been addressing two poles of the age spectrum -- children booster-seat age and below on one end, teen drivers and adults at the other end. This new initiative seeks to address the middle -- children 8 to 12 years old. They are tomorrow's drivers, and at an age where they are beginning to make their own decisions and to develop the habits they will carry into their teens and adulthood.

"Education and enforcement efforts over the past several years to increase the proper use of restraints by infants and toddlers have been successful and ultimately have saved lives," Jennings said. "Yet little focus has been given to tweens, who are at a higher risk due to lower rates of restraint use. These children are starting to become more independent, ride more frequently in vehicles driven by someone other than their parents, and they need to be armed with appropriate information to make safe, lifelong decisions about buckling up. After all the success we've achieved with younger children, it seems natural to broaden our focus to include the next age group -- tweens."

The safest place for children 12 and under is buckled up with a lap and shoulder belt in the back seat. Unfortunately, research shows that as children age, restraint use declines and more children are allowed by parents and caregivers to sit in the front seat. Of the 8-14 year olds involved in fatal crashes in 2003, 39% were unrestrained. Because lap/shoulder belts reduce the risk of fatal injury by up to 45% in cars and an average of 60% in light trucks, more children can be saved simply by buckling up. Add sitting in the back to the equation and children are safer yet. Children ages 12 and under are up to 35% less likely to be fatally injured in a crash if they are in the rear seat.

While the grants are being announced today, the grantees will spend the next year implementing their programs and results will be announced as part of CPS Week 2006. Over the course of this year, tween traffic safety-related information and pilot program information will be available on the initiative's website, http://www.tweensafety.org/.

ACTS (http://www.actsinc.org/) is a nonprofit organization that educates the public and policymakers about traffic safety issues, particularly those associated with occupant restraint systems and other vehicle technologies. ACTS develops educational materials, sponsors research and conducts symposia on a variety of highway safety topics. ACTS' members include DaimlerChrysler Corporation; Ford Motor Company; General Motors Corporation; Mazda North American Operations; Nissan North America, Inc.; Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.; Volkswagen of America, Inc.; the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, Inc., and the Automotive Occupant Restraints Council, Inc.

AED (http://www.aed.org/) is an independent, nonprofit organization committed to solving critical social problems in the U.S. and throughout the world through education, social marketing, research, and training. Founded in 1961, AED has a staff of 1,200 professionals, operating 250 programs in more than 80 countries and all 50 U.S. states.