FULTON – From May 24 to June 6, 2021, The City of Fulton Police Department is joining the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for the 2021 Click It or Ticket enforcement mobilization.
We will be out in full force, issuing citations to anyone caught traveling without a buckled seat belt or transporting unrestrained children. Our law enforcement officers are working to spread the message that seat belts save lives.
We’ve heard it before: Seat belts save lives. But let’s give that statement some weight: Between 2015 and 2019, seat belts saved more than 69,000 lives.
That means 69,000 seat belts prevented families from grieving the loss of their loved ones for decades to come.
Unfortunately, we still have nearly 10% of drivers and passengers who do not wear seat belts. Even more horrifying are the children and infants who may be included in this number. They are the youngest victims, and they are almost always reliant upon adults to correctly buckle them in to their car seats or boosters.
Buckling your seat belt should be automatic. It should be the first thing done when you get in the car. As law enforcement officers, it is our greatest wish to spread the message about the importance of seat belt use, and remind people that seat belt use isn’t just a suggestion, it’s the law.
For this year’s Click It or Ticket seat belt mobilization effort, NHTSA is asking all states to participate in the kickoff event, Border to Border (B2B) on May 24, a one-day, 4-hour national seat belt awareness event coordinated by participating state highway safety offices and their respective law enforcement liaisons.
The focus of B2B is on nighttime hours, when seat belt use is at its lowest. The B2B program aims to increase law enforcement participation by coordinating highly visible seat belt enforcement for drivers at heavily traveled, highly visible state border checkpoints.
Due to the Memorial Day holiday, May is a critical period for law enforcement agencies to target unbuckled drivers. This is not a campaign to write tickets or train law enforcement. This is a campaign to help keep people safe and alive. We see the casualties of not wearing a seat belt, and we do not wish that devastation on anyone.
According to NHTSA, in 2019, there were 9,466 unbuckled passenger vehicle occupants killed in crashes in the United States.
In that same year, 55% of passenger vehicle occupants killed at night (6 p.m.–5:59 a.m.) were not wearing their seat belts. That’s why one focus of the Click It or Ticket campaign is nighttime enforcement. Participating law enforcement agencies will be taking a no-excuses approach to seat belt law enforcement, writing citations day and night.
We ask drivers across the country to please make buckling up an automatic habit. Whether you ride in the front seat or the back, and no matter which car seat or booster seat your child may use, everyone’s seat belt should be buckled every trip. The action is so quick and so basic — and it can save a life.
In addition to increased patrols and zero-tolerance enforcement, we want to get you the facts about the dangers of unbuckled driving:
- YOUTH: Young adults in particular seem to think they are invincible in vehicles. Unfortunately, they are dying at a disproportionate rate because they are not wearing their seat belts.
- MALES: Almost twice as many men are dying in vehicle crashes compared to women, and they are wearing their seat belts less often.
- PICKUP TRUCK DRIVERS AND PASSENGERS: Many pickup truck occupants think that they don’t need to wear their seat belts because they believe their large vehicles will protect them in a crash. However, the numbers from NHTSA tell the truth: 58% of pickup truck occupants who were killed in crashes were not buckled up. That’s compared to 43% of passenger car occupants who were unbuckled when they were killed in crashes.
You can find out more about the Click It or Ticket mobilization at www.nhtsa.gov/ciot.
*Submitted by Lt Charles Burlingham, City of Fulton Police Department.
missing or outdated ad config
