(Outstanding Innovative Project)

PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION
Prior to passage of a tribal seat belt law in 1988, the Navajo Nation's seat belt usage was only eight percent. Child safety seat usage was zero percent. The tribe's motor vehicle-related hospital discharge rate was 256 per 100,000 population, and its motor vehicle fatality rate was 97 per 100,000 population, five times higher than that of the general U.S. population. Rollovers were a major cause of injuries and deaths, with 12 percent of drivers and passengers on the Navajo Reservation being ejected from their vehicles during crashes.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
The goal of the initiative was to increase seat belt use by 10 percentage points per year until 70 percent use was achieved. Objectives included:

• Passing a tribal seat belt law
• Decreasing motor vehicle-related injuries by five percent a year and fatalities by four percent a year through increased traffic enforcement
• Increasing use of child safety seats
• Raising awareness of injury prevention throughout the Navajo Nation

STRATEGIES AND ACTIVITIES
After the Navajo Nation Tribal Council passed a seat belt law in 1988, tribal enforcement and awareness activities began, including:

• Establishing a Community Traffic Safety Program, which uses comprehensive community-level educational programs, and Navajo/English language public information and education materials and activities such as public service announcements (PSAs), Saved by the Belt awards, poster contests and media events
• Implementing a variety of Tribal, State, Federal, and Community/Chapter (district) programs including school-based injury prevention curricula, Safe Kids programs, traffic records systems, defensive driver training, and a DWI task force
• Distributing printed information on the tribal seat belt law at highly-publicized roadblocks
• Airing PSAs on two local radio stations, both in English and in the Navajo language
• Providing child restraints at no cost to families in need

RESULTS
By the end of 1995, monthly surveys conducted by the Department of Highway Safety showed seat belt use on the Navajo Reservation to be 78 percent. Child restraint use was 45 percent. Navajo Nation employees operating government vehicles now buckle up 100 percent of the time.

Hospital data collected by the Indian Health Service (IHS) show the Navajo Nation motor vehicle-related hospital discharge rate to have decreased 50 percent since 1988, from 256 per 100,000 population to 127 per 100,000 in 1995. The tribe's motor vehicle-related fatality rate has dropped from 97 per 100,000 in 1988 to 47 per 100,000 in 1994, a 52 percent decline.

In 1996, the fifth year of the Community Traffic Safety Program, the tribe is working toward self-sufficiency of the project. Salary and expenses for three additional technicians and all enforcement efforts in support of the program are now funded by the Navajo Nation. The program works collaboratively with the Navajo Nation Division of Public Safety, Department of Law Enforcement, Bureau of Indian Affairs, EMS, Fire Services, Department of Highway Safety, and Indian Health Services.

This project was the recipient of the 1996 NHTSA Administrator's Highway Safety Program of Excellence Award.

FALL 1998