According to a study reported by the National Safety Council (NSC), 25,240 people died on the roads in 2022. They also found that around 15,000 people weren’t buckled up, meaning of those passenger vehicle occupants killed, nearly 50% of them weren’t wearing a seat belt.

This also means that nearly 50% of those who died WERE wearing a seat belt.

Interestingly, the percentage of people who weren’t restrained when they died has remained remarkably constant. It always seems to hover around the 50% mark, demonstrating a very interesting phenomena.

According to the above statement the pie chart shown here is not really representative of seat belt data. Year over year it remains a fact that in fatal car crashes 50% die WHILE wearing a seat belt and 50% die while not wearing a seat belt. The conclusion typically drawn from this data that if the 50% who were not wearing a seat belt HAD been wearing a seat belt they would have lived.

This seems a biased conclusion. If nearly 50% of car crash victims die WHILE wearing a seatbelt then if everyone wore one we would have 100% of crash victims who die were wearing a seatbelt.

If 25,000+ people die a year on average on the road and 12,500 WERE wearing a seat belt then instead of saying the other 12,500 unrestrained passengers would have lived we could just as easily conclude that they would have died WITH their seat belts on. It looks to me that statistically your odds of surviving a car crash are the same with or without a seat belt. (this data is from the website Team Justice)