What happens is seatbelt laws cause drivers to drive more aggressively. Because drivers feel safer with quick acceleration and breaking while wearing seatbelts, accident rates actually increase.

Cyclists were the only group of road users in Britain whose death rate increased sharply

As the factors involved in collisions have become better understood, some organizations have begun to avoid the term "accident," as the word suggests an unpreventable, unpredictable event and disregards the opportunity for the driver(s) involved to avoid the crash. Although auto collisions are rare in terms of the number of vehicles on the road and the distance they travel, addressing the contributing factors can reduce their likelihood. For example, proper signage can decrease driver error and thereby reduce crash frequency by a third or more.[4] That is why these organizations prefer the term "collision" rather than "accident".

However, treating collisions as anything other than "accidents" has been criticized for holding back safety improvements, because a culture of blame may discourage the involved parties from fully disclosing the facts, and thus frustrate attempts to address the real root causes.[5]

"the feeling of being confident in more and more challenging situations is experienced as evidence of driving ability, and that 'proven' ability reinforces the feelings of confidence. Confidence feeds itself and grows unchecked until something happens – a near-miss or an accident".

It can safely be said that many places which look dangerous do not have accidents, or very few. Conversely, a location that does not look dangerous may have a high crash frequency. The reason for this is simple. If drivers perceive a location as hazardous, they take more care and there are no accidents. Accidents happen when hazardous road or traffic conditions are not obvious at a glance, or where the conditions are too complicated for the limited human machine to perceive and react in the time and distance available.

This phenomena has been observed in risk compensation research, where the predicted reductions in accident rates have not occurred after legislative or technical changes. One study observed that the introduction of improved brakes resulted in more aggressive driving,[15] and another argued that compulsory seat belt laws have not been accompanied by a clearly-attributed fall in overall fatalities.

Research has shown that, across all collision types, it is less likely that seat belts were worn in collisions involving death or serious injury, rather than light injury; wearing a seat belt reduces the risk of death by about two thirds.[32] Seat belt use is controversial, with notable critics such as Professor John Adams suggesting that their use may lead to a net increase in road casualties due to a phenomenon known as risk compensation.

Motorcyclists have little protection other than their clothing; this difference is reflected in the casualty statistics, where they are more than twice as likely to suffer severely after a collision. In 2005 there were 198,735 road crashes with 271,017 reported casualties on roads in Great Britain. This included 3,201 deaths (1.1%) and 28,954 serious injuries (10.7%) overall. Of these casualties 178,302 (66%) were car users and 24,824 (9%) were motorcyclists, of whom 569 were killed (2.3%) and 5,939 seriously injured (24%).