‘Click It Or Ticket’ reminds students to buckle up

The Department of Public Safety at Georgia College & State University will take part in the national Click It Or Ticket campaign May 19 through June 1.

“It’s a nation-wide safety belt campaign,” said Deputy Director of Public Safety, Richard Goodson.

According to the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety (GOHS), the goal of Click It Or Ticket is to “save lives and reduce injuries on Georgia roadways through strict enforcement of seat belt and child safety seat laws.”

Goodson said officers will be setting up roadblocks and intersection checks to make sure that people are buckled up. People who are not buckled up will either receive a ticket or a warning with literature that will help to educate them on the importance of buckling up.

According to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, “seatbelts reduce the risk of death for a front seat car occupant by about 45 percent.”

The first Click It or Ticket campaign in Georgia was held in May 2001. It resulted in “more than 7,763 checkpoints, 33,208 citations for safety belt violations and 2,905 child passenger restraint citations,” according to the GOHS web site.

The campaign produced increased numbers in the percentages of people who use safety belts as well as those who use child passenger restraints.

Goodson said Click It Or Ticket will not only be an effort to educate GC&SU students, but will also try to educate the entire community. He said the program will hopefully save lives and decrease the number of serious injuries that result from not wearing a safety belt.

“The significance is kind of obvious because failure to buckle up contributes to more fatalities than any other single traffic behavior,” he said. “It’s just basically an effort to teach people to be safe.”

GC&SU student Amy Rary is receptive to the idea of Click It Or Ticket.

“It’s a good idea because it makes people aware of their actions and it keeps people safe,” said Rary, a senior Education major.

The national campaign will take place all over Georgia and will also be in place during Memorial Day weekend.

Director of Public Safety, Ken Vance, said using seat belts should be a no-brainer.

“First, it’s the law. Second, failure to use seat belts could result in a ticket that costs you money. Third, using seat belts reduces your chance for injury or death in a wreck. What’s not to understand?”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Apr 18 2003. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry