More Virgin Islands Men Wear Seat Belts Than Women, According To A Highway Safety Survey

ST. CROIX — Some may have a difficult time agreeing with the results, but a recent study conducted by the Office of Highway Safety (OHS) has found that Virgin Islands men wear seat belts more often VI women.

The survey, revealed at a press conference this morning by OHS’ Territorial Occupant Protection Coordinator, Leslie Dickenson, (VI Consortium’s story on OHS’ ‘Click it or Ticket’ initiative will be published on Tuesday morning), is conducted every year and showed that in 2014, 57 percent of the territory’s women remained unbuckled, compared to 43 percent of the men.

According to Dickenson, the seat belt survey is conducted through a contractor who hires people to observe day, time of day, gender, locations, seat belt use and non-seat belt use for driver and passenger. The territorial occupant also revealed that the survey is conducted for an entire week in 15-minute intervals for 8 hrs.

Dickenson said the way locations are determined is through traffic inventory made available to OHS by the Department of Public Works, which aids in better targeting roads with the most traffic, as well as helping to avoid roads that crossover so the same group of motorists are not targeted twice.

Dickenson, along with Traffic Commander Joseph Platt, encouraged motorists to wear seat belts at all times, and revealed that for the first quarter of 2015, 8 vehicular accidents occurred where three of the occupants were unrestrained, resulting in a total of 5 fatalities.