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    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 of a car cuts your chance of being killed in a crash by more than 40%. 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. The yearbook of China's National Bureau of Statistics (国家统计局) records 62218 road crash deaths in 2021

    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 about 4 times the 62218 in the statistical yearbook. 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): "Among killed passenger vehicle occupants with known restraint use, 48 percent of those in the front row and 60 percent of those in the second row were unrestrained." 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
    4. National Bureau of Statistics (2022). China Statistical Yearbook 2022 [in Chinese], Table 24-5 Road Traffic Accidents (2021): 62218 deaths. https://www.stats.gov.cn/sj/ndsj/2022/html/C24-05.jpg

    This tip also appears in

    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