Every year, Georgia participates in Click It or Ticket enforcement and media campaigns during the Memorial Day and Thanksgiving travel periods to reinforce seat belt safety awareness statewide. Why? Because the Click It or Ticket program is vital in continuing the fight against un belted crashes, injuries and fatalities.
One of the safest choices drivers and passengers can make is to buckle up. The nationwide seat belt usage rate was 90.7 percent in 2019 and of the 37,133 people killed in motor vehicle crashes in 2017, 47% were not wearing seat belts. In 2017 alone, seat belts saved an estimated 14,955 lives and could have saved an additional 2,549 people if they had been wearing seat belts.
The consequences of not wearing, or improperly wearing, a seat belt are clear:
- Buckling up helps keep you safe and secure inside your vehicle, whereas not buckling up can result in being totally ejected from the vehicle in a crash, which is almost always deadly.
- Air bags are not enough to protect you. In fact, the force of an air bag can seriously injure or even kill you if you’re not buckled up.
- Improperly wearing a seat belt, such as putting the strap below your arm, puts you and your children at risk in a crash.
The benefits of buckling up are equally clear:
- If you buckle up in the front seat of a passenger car, you can reduce your risk of fatal injury by 45 percent and moderate to critical injury by 50 percent.
- If you buckle up in a light truck, you can reduce your risk of fatal injury by 60 percent and moderate to critical injury by 65 percent.
