pjclinch wrote:"There is evidence, albeit not conclusive, that vulnerable road casualties increased in the wake of increased seatbelt uptake" is probably better than "oh, you can't say that, we're not sure".
I think that's suitably qualified, and goes for much of the evidence about all sorts of Gospel Road Safety claims. As I often point out, the evidence is all over the places so we're in a general state of "not proven".
Systematic reviews are all very well but assume you've got a body of literature to systematically review. Seems that if you can find hardly anything at all that's not really the case! If there's not much at all that pushes you back to the "There is evidence, albeit not conclusive". Part of the problem here is that the seatbelt cat is long out of the bag and where you have data it is old and its collection not necessarily informed by more up to date understanding of risk: we see it as much more slippery now than we did back when we were looking at seatbelt legislation. It's something to bear in mind for data collection in future though.
Pete.
Other things that have happened in car use and construction, along with seat belts, are ABS brakes, airbags, heated windscreens, heated rear windscreens, heated mirrors, electric windows, electric sunroofs, air-con, climate control, electric seats, airbags, double-glazed windows (MB S class), cruise control, lane warnings, adaptive cruise control, sat nav, ICE, heated seats, massaging seats - apparently, in the back of some Lexuses (I'll leave that as a puzzle for our local Latin scholar to solve). And so on.
Over the summer I twice ended up hiring cars far more luxurious than the one I actually own. A Lexus on one occasion, and a Discovery. They were both nice, the Lexus especially. I was amazed at how luxurious driving it felt. There was a general feeling of being insulated from the world outside the car. Some of the driver enhancements I think actually enhance safety. I was certainly less tired and more alert at the end of a 400 mile journey than I would have been in any car I've owned. And the various detectors around the vehicle did indeed warn me when, in central London, people were walking very close to the car. I didn't really want to try to drive in to the car in front, just to test whether the automatic braking worked, but I'll assume it would have.
The uptake of seat belts, and the legislation mandating their use (which are two different things, a point seemingly lost on those who endlessly trot out Australian studies on helmet usage) may have some influence on driver behaviour. But I would say it is the far more general increase in the amount of car comfort and safety features that has led to a "distancing" of some drivers from other road users.