Responding to this paper is quite easy because there is virtually nothing in it that is not supported by existing data But it is desirable to expand upon the paper's findings and to suggest some additional research. The paper developed by David Pruesser, Mark Solomon, and Linda Cosgrove concludes that primary enforcement (involving both laws and actual enforcement) is associated with substantially higher seat belt use rates among racial minorities (primarily African Americans and Hispanic Americans) without resulting in proportionally greater citation rates for these groups (relative to the citation rates for whites). This clearly seems to be the case, and these researchers have conducted most of the research on mis issue. But there is more to the story. First, as the authors point out to some extent, blacks and Hispanics (compared with whites) also appear to be both more aware of changes in legislation and primary enforcement and have a greater "respect" for these changes in that they perceive that they will lead to a greater increase in the intensity of enforcement and the number of citations. At the same time, however, telephone surveys conducted by a variety of organizations in a variety of circumstances uniformly report that blacks and Hispanics also support primary laws and enforcement to a greater extent man whites and they are more likely to conclude mat primary enforcement (or intensified enforcement) is the correct way to increase safely belt use. This response reviews briefly these issues of sensitivity and support and discusses implications for additional research that may be needed. Admittedly, the observations provided come from a mixture of studies of changes in laws (i.e., upgrading from primary to secondary) and changes in levels of enforcement (i.e., crackdowns, special traffic enforcement programs, etc.). However, they are relevant to the primary law issue in that they all relate to the measured support for such laws among minority communities.
展开▼
