Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Buckly up or get busted; Click it or ticket underway

Buckle up or suffer the consequences. This is the concept behind the Click It or Ticket campaign.

For a two-week period, from May 24 through June 6, law enforcement officers will be paying special attention to motorists and seat belts. Those who don't buckle up their seat belts will be given a ticket.

The Prescott Police Department joins more than 13,000 other law enforcement agencies across the nation in participating in this campaign. Officers will primarily be targeting teens and young adults, with the idea being if they won't buckle up to save their lives, they should buckle up to avoid getting a ticket.

The Click It or Ticket campaign is based on a proven public health model to increase the use of seat belts. This technique is called "high visibility enforcement". Last year's campaign resulted in a 4 percent increase in safety belt usage.

"The only proven way to get significant increases in belt use among young people and ultimately save lives, is through high visibility enforcement, including targeted and intense advertising to alert people to the enforcement," said Morris Irvin, assistant chief. "Teens and young adults are killed at far higher rates in crashes because they are caught in a lethal intersection of inexperience, risk taking and low safety belt use. These tragedies are predictable and therefore preventable, using proven techniques like high visibility enforcement mobilizations.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 4,530 teens aged 16-19, died and some 320,000 more were seriously injured in traffic crashes in 2002. And, while young drivers age 15-20 account for 6.6 of licensed drivers (12.6 million), they represent 14 percent of all drivers involved in fatal crashes and 16 percent (1,862,000) of police reported wrecks in 2001.

Teen seat belt use in states with strong belt laws is consistently and substantially higher, presenting compelling evidence of the need to enact primary laws throughout the United States, according to a new analysis of government fatality data.

The analysis was based on information from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), the NHTSA database containing information on virtually all fatal wrecks on public roads in the nation. FARS data are deemed precise because belt use at the time of a fatality is determined and recorded.

"While national seat belt use stands at 79 percent," Irvin said, "we know the remaining 21 percent who don't wear their seat belts are disproportionately teens and young men ages 18-34. Safety belt use for teens and young adults ages 16-24 is more like 69 percent and continues to lag behind the rest of the population. It's important to note this is a daytime belt use number. We know nighttime belt use is much lower among teens and young adults."

During the Click It or Ticket campaign, officers will intensify enforcement of safety belt laws and child passenger safety laws by setting up checkpoints and saturation patrols. Drivers failing to restrain themselves and their child passengers will be ticketed according to the law.

"Enforcement gets people to buckle up  seat belt use in states conducting high visibility enforcement is 10 to 15 percent higher than states simply conducting public education," said Scott Sundberg, with the PPD. "If every state conducted high visibility enforcement, we would save 5,000 to 7,000 lives each year."