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Cultural Context and the Impact of Traffic Safety Legislation: The Reception of Mandatory Seatbelt Laws in Yugoslavia and Illinois

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Robert M. Hayden
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Abstract

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In 1985, laws mandating the wearing of automobile seatbelts went into effect in Illinois and in Yugoslavia. Although the form of the legislation was similar in both jurisdictions, the public response to the laws was very different in the two societies. In Illinois, there was public opposition, a protracted legal challenge to the law, and minimal enforcement by the police. In Yugoslavia, there was no public or legal challenge to the law yet strict enforcement. Compliance, however, was much greater in America than in Yugoslavia. Since previous studies of the impact of seatbelt laws in the United States and in other countries had found patterns of compliance that were similar to those in Illinois, the Yugoslav situation is anomalous. This unexpected finding raises questions concerning the importance of cultural context on the effectiveness of seatbelt laws, on the basic views of law in the two societies, on problems in testing deterrence theory cross-culturally, and on the problems and benefits of comparative research on the impact of legislation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , 1989 , pp. 283 - 294
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 The Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

The data reported in this paper were gathered while I was engaged in other research on law in Yugoslavia, which was sponsored at various times by the Fulbright Program, the National Science Foundation Law and Social Science Program, the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), the American Council of Learned Societies, and the American Bar Foundation. The usual disclaimer of institutional agreement with the views expressed in this paper is particularly important in this case because the agencies did not explicitly fund this research.

I am grateful to Rich Scaglion, Candice Hoke, Shari Seidman Diamond, and two anonymous reviewers for the Law & Society Review for their comments on earlier versions of this paper, and to Stevan Lilic for his invaluable help.

References

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