It's not about writing more tickets, it's about saving more lives! Every time a Georgia law enforcement officer writes a safety belt citation during the May Click It Or Ticket campaign, they'll be thinking about the fifty-five percent of Americans killed in traffic crashes who weren't wearing safety belts at the time of their crash. That's 31,693 dead neighbors, friends and families who might have escaped being labeled as statistics if they'd just buckled-up!
And that's why the Governor's Office of Highway Safety (GOHS) is about to launch Georgia's latest campaign to catch safety belt violators here. "Because motor vehicle crashes on our highways are still killing our kids at a higher rate than any other cause of death on the planet," said GOHS Director Bob Dallas. "Car crashes are still the Number One Killer of our children age two-to-fourteen and for our teens and young adults."
To combat this carnage, GOHS will again coordinate the life-saving Click It Or Ticket enforcement strategy with law enforcement agencies throughout the State of Georgia in 2006. State Troopers will roll-out their high profile patrols and road checks during the Memorial Day holidays. Police from Jesup to Jonesboro.. and deputies from Taliaferro to Terrell County will be ticketing unbelted drivers and their passengers.
"Our studies show that young men especially are much less likely to buckle-up. Seventy-three percent of those male passengers in the 18-to-34 age bracket were killed in crashes where they weren't wearing safety belts," said Director Dallas. "But we also know that for those same young male drivers, the worry of getting a traffic ticket is sometimes the only motivation to fasten their safety belt."
Georgia's "Primary Safety Belt Law" allows police to pull a driver over and write a safety belt ticket after simply observing an unbelted driver or passenger on the road. Safety belt use in Georgia last year was at 89.9-percent.. the highest in the Southeast. Even so, Georgia still lost 794 unbelted occupants in 2004. The message behind Georgia's Click It Or Ticket 2006 campaign is simple: Buckle-up! Every Trip, Every Seat, Every Time.
