(WWJ) — There’s good news and bad news coming out of a recent study looking at Michigan drivers’ habits on the road.
A Michigan State University report, commissioned by the Michigan State Police Office of Highway Safety Planning, shows the number of people using their phones behind the wheel is dropping. But so too is the number of people who are wearing seat belts.
Katie Bower, director of the Michigan Office of Highway Safety Planning, calls the decline in phone usage “very encouraging” after the state’s new distracted driving law went into effect in July 2023.
The study says just 5.5% of Michiganders are using their phones while driving, which is down from 6.7% last year.
While Bower credits the hands-free driving law for the 1.2% drop, she said there’s still work to do.
“We need to make it a cultural thing — when you get in the car, all you do is drive, you don’t look at your phone. It’s constant education, constant reinforcement,” she told WWJ Newsradio 950’s Luke Sloan.
In part, Bower says, that can be done by setting a good example for future drivers.
“Parents and guardians, older siblings, friends modeling that behavior so when they do have little ones who are influenced, they’re watching their mom and dad drive, their brothers and sisters drive, that they’re seeing when you do drive you don’t do anything else except that,” she said.
While the drop in handheld device use is being celebrated, officials are concerned about the drop in seat belt usage across the state for the second straight year.
Just 92 percent of drivers use their seat belts, marking a drop of 0.4% from 2023. That number had dropped by 0.5% from 2022, according to the Office of Highway Safety Planning.
The 92% mark is the lowest seat belt use rate the state has seen since 2004, when it was 90.5%, according to the study.
“Every unbuckled seat belt represents a life at risk,” Bower said in a press release earlier this week. “It’s disheartening to see the seat belt use rate in Michigan continue to decline. We must remind everyone that safety is a shared responsibility. Every time we buckle up, we protect not just ourselves but everyone on the road.”
She told Sloan the numbers show that wearing seat belts will help save lives.
“Every 1% in seat belt use means an estimated 10 fewer traffic deaths and 100 fewer serious injuries,” Bower said.
She said the state is trying to tackle the problem by focusing on counties with the least seat belt use, noting earlier this year she sent a “call to action” letter to all of the counties the study found to have lower seat belt rates.
A county-by-county breakdown of seat belt usage is available on the OHSP website. The full MSU study can be found here.