...Vanderbilt University psychologist David Schlundt studied the relationship between seat belt use and weight after noticing that obese people sometimes struggled to fit into the auto restraints.
"They really have a hard time getting that belt buckle over them," Schlundt said. "They have to stretch it out and then over and then some can't see the buckle."
Schlundt and his colleagues at Meharry Medical College in Nashville reviewed nearly 250,000 responses about seat belt use from a national telephone health survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Based on that 2002 data, the study found that seat belt use declined as body mass index a calculation based on height and weight increased.
Only about 70 percent of extremely obese individuals reported always using a seat belt, while nearly 83 percent of normal-weight people always used their belts, the study found. More than half of those killed in auto accidents weren't wearing seat belts, according to the latest federal figures. The study's findings were published in the journal Obesity. . . .
