The Arlington County Police Department will be joining other state and local law enforcement agencies this week to participate in the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) seat belt enforcement campaign Click It or Ticket. The no-excuses, zero-tolerance crackdown combines messages about seat belt safety, with increased patrols day and night, targeting all unbuckled motorists.
NHTSA research indicates that proper seat belt use reduces the risk of fatal injury to front seat passengers by 45 percent, and the risk of moderate to serious injury by 50 percent. In 2013, seat belts saved the lives of 12,584 passenger vehicle occupants.
Nationwide, the seat belt use rate is at an all-time high of 87 percent, but the Click It or Ticket campaign aims to reach that remaining 13 percent. In 2013, for example, there were 9,580 unbuckled occupants killed in crashes — 49 percent of all passenger vehicle occupants killed that year. During the Thanksgiving holiday weekend in 2013, law enforcement noted that 64 percent of the passenger vehicle occupants killed at night were unrestrained, as compared to 48 percent during the day.