According to the offsetting effect theory, since drivers wearing seat belts feel moresecure, they tend to drive less carefully and may cause more accidents, includingthose involving pedestrians. Most previous studies have used only state-level accidentdata, which cannot control for individual characteristics of drivers, vehicles, and theenvironmental factors surrounding the accidents. This paper uses individual-levelaccident data to analyze how drivers respond to the laws exploiting changes in theseat belt laws in a number of US states in the last decade. I find that the laws do notcause less careful behavior by drivers. In fact, they drive more carefully when morestringent seat belt laws are in effect, and this leads to less involvement of pedestriansin accidents. These results show that the offsetting effects do not exist when allaccidents, including fatal accidents, are considered.
展开▼
