A team of researchers in Maine sat through more than a 100 of the most popular G- and PG-rated movies of the last several years. The researchers didn't care if the movie was well-paced or if it had believable dialogue. But they did care about whether characters were following safety recommendations like buckling up in the car, or in the case of Nancy Drew, handling dangerous devices.

"Unintentional injuries is the leading cause of death in children in the United States and Canada," says Jon Eric Tongren, the lead author of a journal article coming out in "Pediatrics" on injury prevention in kids' movies.

He's also an epidemiologist for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who collaborated with other researchers in Maine for the study. He says kids are impressionable and watch a lot of movies, so Hollywood has a role in preventing accidents, which account for more than a third of deaths among children.

"Our impetus was to look at movies that are marketed for children and see the depiction of injury-prevention practices in these movies, and see if their depiction is appropriate -- if people are wearing seatbelts, if pedestrians are crossing in crosswalks, if bicyclists are wearing helmets and if boaters are wearing personal flotation devices," Tongren says.

Researchers found that about half of the scenes they viewed portrayed unsafe practices and rarely showed the consequences of those actions.

Take the popular 2003 comedy, Elf. Here, the title character played by Will Ferrell, crosses a busy New York street without looking both ways as a taxi cab approaches. Ferrell falls to the ground, but promptly springs up from the cab, without a scratch.

Despite scenes like this, researchers point out that Hollywood has increased its portrayal of safety practices. "The trend line is up. We're seeing a percentage increase in accurate reflections. That's what we want to focus on," says Sandra deCastro Buffington, director of the Hollywood, Health and Society program at the University of Southern California, a resource for film and television writers scripting stories that touch on public health.

She credits writers with increasingly paying attention to health issues when their priority is story-telling. "Scriptwriters are not health educators. That is not their job or their mission, and we can't expect that of them. And we can't even expect them necessarily to be socially conscious people. Writers tell us, 'My job is to tell a compelling story.'"

Larry Deutchman of the Entertainment Industries Council in Los Angeles, also works to raise awareness about health and social issues in Hollywood. He says it is important for the entertainment industry to role-model safe behavior. "Even with adults, the more you see a behavior the more likely you are to engage in it and likewise the less you see it, the less likely you are to engage in it."

As an example, he points to a campaign his group started in the mid-1980s to get actors to wear seatbelts on screen. He says seatbelt use nationally was in the 30 to 40-percent range. "Seatbelt use on-screen was actually higher than it was in the general public and what eventually happened was that between the fact that that was being role-modeled, combined with all the other factors like legislation mandating seatbelt use, it finally caught on with the public and eventually surpassed what you were seeing on-screen."

At the same time, Deutchman cautions against forcing the industry to include injury-prevention practices in films.

What everybody can agree on is that parents are critical factors in teaching safety to kids. Andrew Pelletier, an epidemologist who was assigned by the CDC to work in Maine, came up with the original idea for the study nearly 15 years ago after going to the movies with his young daughter.

"We'd like parents to just sort of keep out an eye out and when they see something that they know is incorrect, maybe just point it out to their child so the child doesn't get the wrong idea."

The article will be published next month in the journal Pediatrics. For a link to an online version of the study, click here.