The Mountain Home Police Department is reminding drivers about the benefits of wearing a seat belt during the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Safety Traffic Safety Administration’s national “Click It or Ticket” high-visibility enforcement effort.
The national seat belt campaign, which coincides with the Memorial Day holiday, runs from May 24 to June 6. Arkansas began The Natural State’s mobilization early, launching the statewide campaign Monday.
Arkansas state law requires all front seat passengers, not just drivers, to be properly buckled up. The state law also requires all children less than 15 years of age to be properly secured in the vehicle. Children less than 6 years of age and weighing less than 60 pounds should be restrained in a child passenger safety seat. Additionally, drivers with restricted licenses and all occupants in the vehicle must be properly buckled up.
“We want the act of buckling up to become automatic to all drivers and passengers,” MHPD Sgt. Bryan Corbett says. “It’s not just a safe thing to do — it’s the law. During the Click It or Ticket campaign, we’ll be working with our fellow law enforcement officers across local and state lines to ensure the message gets out to drivers and passengers. Buckling up is the simplest thing you can do to limit injury or save your life during a crash. We see the results of not wearing a seat belt all the time. We see the loss of life. So often, it could have been prevented.”
According to the National Highway Safety Traffic Safety Administration, 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 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.
Almost twice as many males were killed in crashes as compared to females, with lower belt use rates, too. Of the males killed in crashes in 2019, more than half (51%) were unrestrained. For females killed in crashes, 40% were not buckled up.
“If you know a friend or a family member who does not buckle up when they drive, please ask them to consider changing their habits,” Corbett says. “Help us spread this lifesaving message before one more friend or family member is killed as a result of this senseless inaction. Seat belts save lives, and everyone — front seat and back, child and adult — needs to remember to buckle up.”
For more information on the Click It or Ticket mobilization, please visit nhtsa.gov/ciot.
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