2016 Click It or Ticket
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 03/10/2016
Click It or Ticket Campaign Started March 1st
Eustis Police Department Will Show Zero Tolerance
[Eustis, FL] – Once again, Eustis Police Department is reminding motorists to Click It or Ticket. As part of the seat belt enforcement campaign, law enforcement agencies around the country will be stepping up enforcement March 1st to March 14th.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, nearly half of the 21,022 passenger vehicle occupants killed in crashes in 2014 were unrestrained. At night from 6 p.m. to 5:59 a.m., that number soared to 57 percent of those killed. 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. In Lake County, the maximum penalty for a seat belt violation is $116.
Locally, 19 unbelted vehicle occupants died in 2015. 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 2014, more than half (53%) were unrestrained. For females killed in crashes, 40 percent were not buckled up.
“If you ask the family members of those unrestrained people who were killed in crashes, they’ll tell you—they wish their loved ones had buckled up,” added Chief Calhoun. “The bottom line is that seat belts save lives. If these enforcement crackdowns get people’s attention, and get them to buckle up, then we’ve done our job.”
For more information on the Click It or Ticket mobilization, please visit www.nhtsa.gov/ciot.
###
