Safety belt program working to find solutions to fatalities in rural areas

A program meant to improve seat belt usage and decrease the number of fatalities in rural areas is back in Kentucky.

The High Five Rural Traffic Safety Belt Program kicked off in Grant County Wednesday.

It was first implemented in the state in 2022 and focused on five counties, according to the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet's website. It will focus on five counties in 2024 as well, including Grant County.

To pick the counties, "The KOHS [Kentucky Office of Highway Safety] took the prioritization process from their Highway Safety Plan and modified it to incorporate additional parameters specific to the High Five Rural Traffic Safety Project. The project tries to look specifically at rural areas," KYTC said.

The program began in Iowa but the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration "wanted to verify the results from Iowa and document best practices," KYTC said.

So, it partnered with Kentucky.

KYTC said the state was chosen for several reasons including:

• It ranked #26 for the length of its public road system
• The approximately 80,000 miles of public roadways in the state — 81% of which are rural
• The approximately 127 million miles driven every day in the state
• 130,000 accidents yearly — 63% in urban areas; 52% of those were on rural roads

In 2021, there were 806 fatalities reported in Kentucky, but the number decreased in 2022 to 744, according to data on KYTC's website.
The number, however, rose again in 2023 to 813 in the state.

The use of seat belts has also increased in the state and is close to the national average. The data shows that in 2023, 89.4% of the population wore a seat belt in Kentucky while the National Average was 91.9%.

According to KYTC, the High Five Rural Traffic Safety Belt Program uses several activities to assess, find solutions and foster change including:

• Community outreach — uses cards and posters in public spaces
• Providing education at high schools in the areas
• Seat belt surveys
• Assessing roadways

To learn more about the program, click here .