more overweight people were less likely to wear their seat belt

As well as all the obvious illnesses that being overweight or obese can cause such as heart attacks, cancer, strokes and diabetes you should also be aware that your weight problem can even increase the chance of you dying in a car crash.

A research project done in America at the Meharry-State Farm Alliance involved the analysis of data that had previously been put together by the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. In all almost a quarter of a million people were analysed and put into different categories depending on their Body Mass Index.  It was noted that the more overweight people were the less likely they were to wear their seat belts.

For example normal weight individuals wore their seat belts 83% of the time whereas overweight car drivers wore their seat belts 80% of the time and obese car drivers only wore their seat belts 76% of the time. In the case of morbidly obese car drivers with a Body Mass Index of 40 plus the figure for seat belt wearing was only 70%.

The fact that seat belt usage goes down the heavier that you get means that obesity is causing the deaths of some individuals. Researchers speculated that the reason why the seatbelts are not worn by obese people so often is because firstly they are not able to move so easily to reach the seat belt in the first place as secondly because even when they do wear it the belt is much more uncomfortable for them.

Using a seatbelt can reduce the your chances of dying in a car crash by as much as 50 percent and therefore you should always wear one even for short journeys.