Roswell Police Department
participates in Click It or Ticket
The Roswell Police Department is joining more than 13,000 law enforcement agencies in the national Click It or Ticket campaign which runs from Monday, November 17 through Sunday, November 30, 2003, a two-week period which includes the Thanksgiving holiday. During the campaign, Roswell police officers will intensify enforcement of safety belt laws and child passenger safety laws by setting up checkpoints and saturating the area with patrol units. Drivers failing to restrain themselves and their child passengers will be ticketed according to the law.
Seat belt use in Georgia has increased 79 percent as a result of stepped-up enforcement during the Memorial Day 2003 seat belt crackdown, but that still leaves a great many Georgians driving unbuckled and breaking the law. This Thanksgiving campaign will aim its message at teenagers and young adults who are more likely to ride unbuckled. The goal is to surround teens with a strong safety belt enforcement message. “While national seat belt use is at an all-time high of 79 percent, we know the remaining 21 percent who don’t wear their seat belts are disproportionately teens and young men ages 18-34. Restraint use for teens and young adults continues to lag behind the rest of the nation,” stated Roswell Police Chief Ed Williams.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 5,341 teens, ages 16-20, died and hundreds of thousands more were injured in traffic crashes in 2001. Fatality rates for teens are twice that of older drivers and the risk of crashes for teens is four times that of older drivers. Two out of five deaths among teens are the result of a traffic crash. This year, nearly 8,000 Americans – adults and children – will die in crashes because they failed to buckle their seat belts.
Enforcement gets people to buckle up. High visibility enforcement relies on periods of intense enforcement of seat belt laws coupled with media outreach to let people know about the enforcement. Seat belt use in states that conduct high visibility enforcement is 10 to 15 percentage points higher than in states that simply conduct public education. For many non-seat belt users, and especially young people, the threat of a ticket has proven to be a greater inducement to buckle up than the threat of injury or death.
Roswell has chosen to participate in Click It or Ticket because it works. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) recently reported that child fatalities from traffic crashes have declined by 20 percent since 1997 when the campaign began. The DOT has credited these campaigns for significantly contributing to this decline and for dramatically increasing child restraint use.
Click It or Ticket is conducted twice a year by the Air Bag & Seat Belt Safety Campaign of the National Safety Council in conjunction with law enforcement agencies, state highway safety offices, NHTSA and the National Transportation Safety Board. The campaign is also part of Buckle Up America, an ongoing NHTSA initiative to increase seat belt use and save lives.
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