In what year did the front seatbelt law for cars come into effect?

Question

The requirement to wear a seatbelt

Answer 1

The British Law
The Isles report was never published (according to some authorities[4] it was suppressed as it did not back the pre-existing position of Government and the Department), and is known mainly because it was leaked to The Spectator magazine some time after the law was passed. A law was passed which at the same time introduced evidential breath testing.

The law mandating the compulsory wearing of seat belts for front seat occupiers came into force on January 31, 1983 in the UK[10].

There was a reduction in driver fatalities and an increase in fatalities of rear passengers (not covered by the law)[11]. A subsequent study of 19,000 cyclist and 72,000 pedestrian casualties seen at the time suggests that seat belt wearing drivers were 11-13% more likely to injure pedestrians and 7-8% more likely to injure cyclists [12]. In January 1986 an editorial in The Lancet noted the shortfall in predicted life-saving and "the unexplained and worring increase in deaths of other road users"[13]. Shortly after this, legal compulsion was extended indefinitely.

Rodgers claimed in 1978, prior to his unsuccessful attempt to introduce seat belt compulsion, that "the best evidence" indicated a likely saving of a thousand lives and ten thousand injuries per year. On January 30, 2003, 20 years after the introduction of compulsory front seat belt wearing, the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS) published their Seat Belts Factsheet[14] which states:

Seat belts are a proven way of reducing the severity of injuries. The government has estimated that since seat belt wearing was made compulsory in 1983 it has reduced casualties by at least 370 deaths and 7000 serious injuries per year for front seat belts and 70 deaths and 1000 serious injuries for rear seat belts (DETR 1997).

Adams concludes that there is no evidence of the seat belt law having reduced overall fatality numbers, and that there is evidence of fatalities having migrated from drivers to vulnerable road users. Although the Government argued at the time that the law had saved lives, it has subsequently attributed almost all the benefit for the small reduction in overall driver fatalities to the introduction of evidential breath testing.[6]

According to the Durbin-Harvey report, commissioned by the Dpeartment of Transport following passage of the law, an analysis of fatality figures before and after the law shows:

a clear increase in pedestrian, cyclist and rear-passenger fatalities in collisions involving passenger cars
no such increase in casualties in collisions involving buses and goods vehicles, which were exempt from the law
a reduction in the number of drivers found to be drunk at the scene of collisions
a reduction in overall fatalities between the hours of 10pm and 4am (peak hours for drink-driving offences)
no reduction in overall fatality rates outside these hours.[15]
Seat belt use is a binary: the belt is either worn or not. Belt laws, which tend to lead to substantial changes in wearing rates over very short periods, would, if the predictions of up to 50% reductions in fatalities are correct, be expected to demonstrate large scale step changes in fatality figures. No such changes have been observed. Whether seat belts reduce fatalities, it is inescapably true that any reductions fall well below the predicted levels, a fact widely interpreted as supporting risk compensation theory

Answer 2

The answer to that would depend on where you live. The mandatory use laws or MULs are state laws. There is no federal law requiring seat belt use. The state laws were not all enacted at the same time by the states with MULs. Not all states have MULs nor are the state laws all the same.
States were first encouraged to pass MULs by Secretary of Transportation, William T. Coleman in 1976 and also later by Secretary of Transportation, Elizabeth Dole in the 1984.

Answer 3

In the US, it's all over the radar screen as that is regulated by state law, not federal law. The installation of seatbelts became mandatory with the 1968 model year.

Answer 4

In the UK, 31 January 1983 (obligation to wear seat belts for front seat occupiers)

In US, seatbelt legislation is left up to state governments.

Not compulsory in India.

Answer 5

1983

Answer 6

1968

Answer 7

Sometime in the early seventies, I think, probably seventy-one,seventy-two. I bought my first car in seventy and although it wasn't compulsory seat belts were fitted and I wore them. The law changed soon after but not quite sure how soon.

Answer 8

about 1979/80

Answer 9

It was in the late 60's.

Answer 10

1982/83 it became law to belt up...