National Click It or Ticket campaign

LAKE COUNTY — The Lake County Buckle Up Coalition and all local law enforcement agencies are joining the 2012 national Click It or Ticket seat belt enforcement mobilization to encourage Montanans to buckle up. Additional patrols will be on the road starting May 21 through Memorial Day weekend. These efforts are to help keep impaired drivers off the road and to remind each of us to buckle up every trip, every time.

The goal of this campaign is to help keep people safe on the road, with an emphasis on enforcing Montana’s seat belt and child safety seat laws. Wearing your seat belt keeps you in the vehicle in the event of a crash, whereas being thrown from the vehicle is nearly always fatal. If one person in the car is not buckled up, they are what are known as the “elephant in the car.” The weight of that person, times the speed traveled is the force that they will collide with another object. If that object is a person, that force is enough to be fatal. So just as important as making sure your child is properly restrained is to also make sure every person in the vehicle is buckled up.

Seat belt use saves thousands of lives across America each year. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration statistics show that in 2010, seat belts saved an estimated 12,546 lives nationwide.

“We’d rather everyone choose to buckle up – not just to avoid the ticket, but to be safe and avoid serious injury or death.” said Randy Owens of the Montana Highway Patrol.

Extra patrols are funded by the Montana Department of Transportation through the Selective Traffic Enforcement Program, using funds from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.