Law enforcement set for seat belt enforcement

The Topeka Capital Journal ^ | May 25, 2012 | The Capital-Journal

[lacrew]

Law enforcement officers across Kansas will be working overtime this weekend to enforce seat belt laws as part of the Click It or Ticket campaign.

The campaign began Thursday and will run through June 6. It is sponsored by a grant from the Kansas Department of Transportation.

KDOT said earlier this week that Kansas Highway Patrol troopers, sheriff’s deputies and police officers statewide will work overtime through Memorial Day weekend specifically to make sure people are buckled up.

Kansas is one of 32 states whose laws allow for a vehicle to be stopped solely because occupants aren’t properly restrained. Kansas officers will be enforcing seatbelt laws at night too because the state exceeds national statistics for deaths of unrestrained riders at night.

Nationwide in 2010, the latest year for which data is available, 61 percent of the 10,647 passenger vehicle occupants who died in motor vehicle traffic crashes during primarily nighttime hours weren’t wearing seat belts, KDOT said. In primarily daylight hours, the rate is 42 percent.

In Kansas, 76 percent of the 154 passenger vehicle occupants who died in traffic crashes between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. weren’t wearing their seatbelts, compared with 57 percent during daytime hours.

The law requires all persons in the front seat must be buckled in and everyone under the age of 18 must be buckled in regardless of their location in the vehicle. If a passenger under the age of 14 is unrestrained, the driver will be cited. Where a driver or passenger age 14 through 17 is seen without a seat belt, that person will be cited.

Children under age 4 must be secured in an approved child safety seat, and children ages 4 through 7 must be belted into an approved booster seat. Children ages 8 through 13 must wear seat belts. The law also prohibits people under the age of 14 from riding in any part of a vehicle not intended for carrying passengers, such as a pickup bed.

More than 140 Kansas law enforcement agencies will be participating in Click It or Ticket with the goal of reducing the number of preventable deaths and injuries that occur when unbelted drivers and passengers are involved in traffic crashes.

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[Molon Labbie]

Couple of things I hope folks will mull over about the seatbelts.

If you have a traffic accident that causes your vehicle to roll, and you aren’t belted in, you stand a much greater chance of being ejected, and with that a much greater chance of dying. A fatality on the highway can and will shut it down for hours, thus delaying THOUSANDS of other motorists from their daily pursuits. It is also very expensive to investigate.

Further, if you are unbelted and you roll the car with others inside it, you in essence become a projectile of sorts, tumbling around in the interior of your car, smashing against anything and anyone.