A Brief Summary of Georgia Seat Belt Requirements
Georgia law mandates the use of seat belts for the driver and all front-seat passengers. Georgia Code § 40-8-76 mandates that "each driver, front seat passengers and all children under age 18 shall wear a seat safety belt approved under the Federal Motor Safety Standard No. 208." Any person under the age of 18 must be properly restrained in an approved child restraint system, booster seat, or other authorized safety equipment while operating or riding in a car. Passengers and the driver in the rear seats are advised to obey seat belt requirements, but they are not required by law to do so.
Georgia seat belt laws state that front seat passenger and driver safety belts should extend over the passenger’s or driver’s lap and across the passenger’s shoulder. Rear seat restraints are required for an automobile manufactured after December 31 , 1964. If your vehicle is manufactured before this date, it does not have to be equipped with rear seat safety belts.
Excluding a few rare exemptions, Georgia law requires that the driver and all passengers within the front seat of the vechile wear – and properly use – seat belts designed for the automobile. All children 8 years and older must be secured in a safety seat or booster seat as directed by the manufacturer according to the height of the child. Children who are 6 years old and younger must be properly restrained in an appropriate child safety seat or other authorized restraint system.
Seat Belt Penalties
Both Georgia law and the laws of other states require that people in passenger vehicles wear seat belts. If you’re pulled over for a traffic violation, such as speeding, and the officer notices that you, or anyone else in the vehicle, is not wearing a seat belt, that can be cited as a primary offense. In other words, the officer can stop the vehicle without having other reasons. This applies to front seat passengers and to anyone younger than 18, who must wear a seat belt regardless of where they are sitting.
Georgia’s penalty for seat belt violations is fairly minimal: $15 or $25. For secondary offense seat belt violations, this is the only fine imposed. However, if someone younger than 18 is cited for a secondary offense, such as being in a back seat without a seat belt, then the driver will be fined $25 in addition to the $15 for the minor child’s violation. No one in Georgia can be fined for more than one seat belt violation in any single day.
Exceptions to Georgia Seat Belt Laws
Georgia’s owner’s manual for each car or truck contains the following warning: "Never allow passengers to place the shoulder strap under their arm." Not using your seat belt can expose you to liability for payments city, county, state, and/or private parking garage owners who have placed signs requiring seat belt use. However, the warning not to place the shoulder strap under the arm also reveals that the law does not prohibit it. It also suggests that the law that does exist is practically irrelevant to the issue of injury or death. The law may change in the future, but for now, at least, the law in Georgia requiring use of a seat belt is in the category of laws for which most drivers are fundamentally ignorant.
Georgia law requires all front seat occupants to be buckled up. However, it specifically exempts kids I age 6 or younger or with a BMI of less than 40 from using a seat belt in a school bus or church bus. It also exempts front seat passengers in a truck with a gross vehicle weight rating of less than 26,000 pounds. In addition, the law exempts the driver of a truck or truck driver if the vehicle is being used for farm-related duties under limited circumstances. Finally, the law exempts the driver of a truck from the provisions regarding child passengers if the child is being transported for interstate or intrastate commerce.
Leaving aside a speculative question as to whether future child seat injuries might not result from the rejection of seat belt use imposed by Georgia laws, it is also worth noting something that is not in the law that sets Georgia law apart from other states where seat belt use is mandated. The Georgia code section regarding occupant protection by safety belts is in Chapter 4 of Title 40. Other states with bad seat belt laws prohibit the application of their own legislation to persons who are driving in accordance with the law of another state. In contrast, Georgia O.C.G.A. §40-8-76 specifically excepts it application to persons "operating vehicles in accordance with the law of another state or a province or country." Rather than mandating seat belt use by imposing criminal liability under the Georgia penal code, Georgia imposes civil liability in tort law for the failure to wear a seat belt. The point is that the law in Georgia prescribes that seat belt usage remains mandatory for all front seat drivers, but it does not create a crime for failure to do so. The law simply makes the failure to wear a seat belt a reason to reduce damages in court in some circumstances, based upon when the failure to wear the seat belt was a proximate cause of the injury.
How Georgia Seat Belt Laws Affect Insurance and Liability
The effect of non-compliance with Georgia’s seat belt law on car insurance and if that effect is that your damages are less, the other driver may be at fault because you were not properly restrained and you may have some comparative fault which could reduce your claim amount. Comparative fault assessment is often not favorable for the at fault driver. However, if he has a good liability insurance and you are responsible for failing to wear your seat belt, you could end up with no claim. Non-Compliance with Georgia seat belt laws does not affect liability of car accidents under Georgia law.
The other driver’s duty to exercise reasonable care for the safety of others includes exercising care in making sure you and your passengers are seat belted. If the other driver failed to have his child properly restrained according to Georgia law that would be fault.
As to non-compliance of Georgia Seat Belt Law by the at fault driver, if you can prove the other driver violated the statutes designed to protect you, you can use the statute against him to prove his fault — such as proving his speed he violated Georgia speeding and pace statute was the cause of the collision while also making it impossible for you to avoid a crash with a vehicle that was actually coming head on to cause a frontal offset or side impact collision with your vehicle. This would mean a high speed contributory factor to the crash.
As to whether you have other claims for damages which you have incurred or suffered, it is a matter for the fact finder to determine your reduced due to your failure to wear the seat belt. You must also show your failure to wear the seat belt was a contributing cause of the damages. Drivers who operate their vehicles in violation of established safety statutes are said to "assume the risks" of violations by other drivers (Tate v. MAC Trucking, 236 Ga.App. 402, 503 S.E.2d 616 (1998) (if plaintiff caused accident that would not have occurred had plaintiff obeyed traffic rule, appellate court held rule applied to preclude plaintiff’s recovery)); and it is theoretically possible for non-compliance with the Georgia Seat Belt Law to constitute a violation of the safety statutes, defenses and their application are a matter for the jury.
If a jury finds a passenger was not wearing a seatbelt, there is a presumption he would have been in a safer position if wearing seatbelt. Smith v. Davis, 227 Ga.App. 588, 590(1)(b), 490 S.E.2d 229 (1997); but the rule is limited to the situation where the negligence of another person is also a proximate cause of the injury.
On the other hand, to the extent the passenger’s failure to wear a seatbelt was a cause of the injury, and thus not within the protection of the statute, a jury charge on the issue of seat belt use was proper in this case, and will not be successful as a vehicle for arguing seat belt non-use is a violation of Georgia law that violates public policy so as to find a defendant is liable for all injuries and losses suffered by a plaintiff/passeger. The fact that a violation of a Georgia statute of general application is the proximate cause of another driver’s injury is not conclusive against the negligence of the driver and is no more than some evidence of negligence. See, e.g., Snuggs v. Baird, 261 Ga.App. 259, 580 S.E.2d 33 (2003)(evidence sufficient for jury to find breach of duty to do what a reasonable prudent person would do under same or similar circumstances); Harris v. Metro. Atlanta Rapid Transit Auth., 258 Ga.App. 338, 574 S.E.2d 370 (2002)(proving that an injured motorist has not complied with Georgia’s Safety Act does not shift to the motorist the burden to prove the other party’s negligence proximately caused his injuries); Alford v. Brown, 228 Ga.App. 634, 636-637(2), 492 S.E.2d 282 (1997)(asking jurors to consider defendant’s negligence in failing to comply with Georgia’s safety statutes did not suggest injury was conclusively attributable to breach of duty).
A good disclaimer is key to prevent diminishing your verdict.
Seat Belt Use Stats and Safety Data
According to stats published by the Georgia Department of Motor Vehicle Safety, 91.0 percent of people use seatbelts when driving or riding in a vehicle. Andrew Young wrote in a March 6, 2017 blog post that "Georgia leads the nation in seat belt use. The Department of Transportation has posted a $10 fine for violations but 70 percent of survey respondents said they would wear a seatbelt without a law. Studies show that more people have voluntarily used seat belts since highway safety advocates began educating the public on the dangers of unrestrained drivers and passengers."
In Georgia, the use of seat belts is required for all drivers and front-seat passengers. Children ages 8 to 15 are required to be seat belted in the back seat, while children 9 and over can use a normal seat belt as long as they weigh at least 40 lbs. If a child weighs less than 40 lbs., they must be in a booster seat.
For adults, you cannot be a passenger in the front seat of a car without your seatbelt fastened. (Georgia does not require seatbelts in the back seat for adults.)
However, studies show that 68 percent of crash victims who did not wear seat belts were unrestrained . According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, seat belts saved an estimated 14,668 lives in 2016. The estimates went down if one category of seat belt was excluded, as only 13,941 lives could be saved if front seat belts were excluded from the count.
While seat belts save lives, the vast majority of people – 69 percent of car accident deaths, are unbelted according to the National Center for Statistics and Analysis.
A study published by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration published in 2004 found that "the general deterrent effect of laws requiring seat belt use has been shown frequently to be a valuable adjunct to enforcement of the requirements themselves." It posited that "the deterrent effect of stringent enforcement of mandatory seat belt laws will be maximized if the legislation not only communicates the illegality of failure to wear available seat belts, but also conveys the additional message that the administrator intends to enforce the law vigorously."
Laws like those in Georgia have reduced fatal accidents in the state from 4,019 in 1990 to 1,507 in 2010 according to Georgia DOT.
Recent Revisions or Amendments to the Laws
The most significant recent change to Georgia’s seatbelt laws came in 2017, when the state legislature enacted Senate Bill 292 ("SB 292"). It creates O.C.G.A. § 40-8-76.1. It became effective on September 1, 2018.
The law says that it is a violation for the driver of a passenger car, van, pickup truck, or sport utility vehicle to drive without all passengers using a seat belt. Failure to wear a seat belt is now a "primary offense" under Georgia law. (Primary offenses are the same as driving offenses like speeding or running a stop sign. This effectively means that drivers can get a ticket for the seat belt violation even if law enforcement officers have not stopped them for anything else. Secondary seat belt offenses are those that are ticketed only after a driver is stopped for something else.)
SB 292 mandates each passenger in the front and the back seat wear a seat belt. This means you are required to wear a seat belt even if your entire family is in the car, and even if no one else – not even a child under the age of 8 – is wearing a seat belt in the back. If you are in a truck or SUV with seat belts in the bed, you also have to use those seat belts.
Who Is Affected by the New Seat-Belt Law? The law applies to everyone who drives or rides as a passenger in a passenger car, van, pickup truck, or sport utility vehicle. This includes motorists with an out-of-state license.
Elderly or Disabled Drivers and Passengers A person over the age of 18 is not required to wear a seatbelt if they are physically unable because of a medical condition or disability and the person provides proof of that condition to the authorities. Proof can be a statement from a physician licensed to practice in this state who attests that, due to the person’s condition, it is unsafe for the person to wear a seatbelt. The law says that people older than 75 years old are presumed to be "physically unable" to wear a seat belt.
Seat Belt Laws for Kids Be aware that drivers are responsible for making sure children under the age of 8 are safely restrained. Otherwise, a driver can be ticketed for the seatbelt law violation, and convicted drivers (but not convicted passengers) can be fined up to $50 or sentenced to community service.
How To Stay Up-to-Date on Traffic Laws in Georgia
Staying informed about traffic laws is essential for anyone who drives in Georgia and for those who want to stay up-to-date on the latest changes in these regulations. The first step in staying informed about Georgia’s seat belt laws is to familiarize yourself with the current legislation. The state of Georgia provides a number of resources for drivers to better understand the laws and be aware of any changes. The Georgia Department of Driver Services (DDS) website is a good starting point, as it contains comprehensive information on seat belt laws and other traffic regulations. The site offers detailed information about child passenger safety laws, exemptions to the safety belt law, and guidelines for choosing an appropriate child restraint system. It also provides information on the fines associated with seat belt violations and other traffic offenses. In addition to government websites, local news outlets can also be a valuable resource for information on traffic laws . Local television stations, newspapers, and websites often cover major legislative changes and driver safety initiatives. Keeping an eye on the news can be a helpful way to stay informed about relevant laws in your area. Another useful resource for drivers is the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) website. In addition to federal seat belt laws, the NHTSA website has a wealth of information on traffic safety in Georgia and across the country. The website offers important data on accident statistics, education programs, and public safety campaigns. Lastly, public libraries are an often-overlooked resource for information about traffic laws. Most libraries have extensive databases and archives where you can access older and more obscure legislative information through the local research databases and online archives. By staying informed about the current seat belt laws in Georgia, you can protect yourself and your passengers on the road. Moreover, it can also help you avoid costly fines and accidents that can result in civil or criminal liability.