RACE joins Spain’s campaign with seat belt plea

The Royal Automobile Club of Spain (RACE) has launched its Think Before You Drive campaign in Madrid as Spain gears up for the summer holiday season.

Spain’s first weekend of the summer holidays saw 13 fewer fatalities than last year. RACE and the Spanish Directorate-General for Road Traffic (DGT) have joined forces to lower this number further by giving Think Before You Drive’s simple road safety advice to get people safely to and from their vacation.

According to the DGT’s preliminary data, 329 people killed in road traffic accidents between January and May 2005 were adults not wearing a seat belt or children not properly restrained. These sad figures represent 37.7% of the casualties. Spain currently has seat belt wearing rates of 87% in the front seat and 46% in the back seat outside city centres and 61% in the front seat and 35% in the back seat in cities.

Half of the children aged under one are not correctly restrained and most of those over 4 years old travel without any restraint system at all. RACE has recently lobbied the DGT to encourage use of booster seats and to change current legislation which allows children under 12 years of age and below 150 cm in height to be restrained with only an adult seat belt. This means that most of the children who have outgrown child seats are at risk.

Juan Luis Huidobro, President of RACE, urged Spanish motorists to ensure that they use their seat belts and restraints to reduce the toll of unnecessary and tragic deaths.

The Traficus Road Safety Exhibition, the RACE road safety bus Aula Móvil and the FIA Foundation’s seat belt slide will be visiting 25 cities along the coasts of Spain during the summer as part of the Think Before You Drive campaign, followed by visits to universities when the new academic year starts.