Obese Drivers More Likely To Die In Car Crashes

If you are very overweight, you are more likely to die in an automobile accident. The reason: Overweight drivers don’t wear their seatbelts often enough according to a new study.

“It’s clear that not wearing a seatbelt is associated with a higher chance of death,” says lead author Dietrich Jehle, M.D., a researcher at the University of Buffalo. “… Obese drivers may find it more difficult to buckle up a standard seatbelt.”

Jehle’s research shows that normal weight drivers are 67 percent more likely to wear a seatbelt than morbidly obese (extremely overweight) drivers.

“We found that the relationship between the amount of obesity and seatbelt use was linear; the more obese the driver, the less likely that seatbelts were used,” says Jehle.

Not buckling up is, of course, a deadly decision, says Jehle: It delivers more force to the body much more quickly while also increasing the chances of being thrown from the car.

“The question is: Is there something we can do to cars to make them safer for the obese?” asks Jehle. “How can we make it more likely for people, including the overweight or obese, to wear seatbelts?” He adds that these findings also raise questions about how best to conduct crash-tests of cars. He notes that the dummies that are used in crash-tests are not obese.

“We need to do something, since one-third of the U.S. population is overweight (not obese) and one-third is considered obese,” Jehle says.