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Member Research & Reports

Member Research & Reports

UNC Study Finds Seatbelts are Pregnant Drivers’ Best Bet to Prevent Auto Injuries

You have heard it before: seatbelts save lives. For pregnant women, seatbelts could mean saving at least one life now and another in the very near future. That’s the conclusion from an exhaustive study of 878,546 pregnant drivers between 16 and 46 years of age, conducted by researchers at The University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health. The study, “Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes Following Motor Vehicle Crashes,” published online October 8 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, analyzed the nearly 900,000 pregnant drivers from North Carolina who gave birth to a single infant between 2001 and 2008. The study was led by Dr. Catherine J. Vladutiu, postdoctoral fellow in epidemiology at the Gillings School.