Police ready for 'Click It or Ticket' effort

Nearly three of every five Louisianans who died in passenger vehicle crashes in the state in 2004 were not wearing safety belts, according to new figures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.The average for safety belt use in our five state region is now at 85.5 percent but the

holdouts remain the same: young males, pickup truck drivers and their passengers, rural residents and night-time drivers, said Georgia Chakiris, NHTSA South Central Region administrator. In Louisiana, safety belt use in 2005 was 77.7 percent over all and 72.4 percent for pickup trucks, according to observation surveys. But failure to regularly wear a safety belt can be deadly. According to NHTSA, 705 Louisianans in passenger vehicles died in traffic crashes during 2004 - and 58 percent of those killed were not buckled up at the time of the crash.The Louisiana State Police along with numerous city and county law enforcement agencies across the state will join thousands of police and sheriff's departments nationally in the Click It or Ticket enforcement mobilization May 22 to June 4.We appreciate the fact that many more people in Louisiana are using their safety belts in the last few years, but there are too many people who still don't think they need to buckle up, said Louisiana Highway Safety Commission Executive Director James Champagne. Buckling up is easy and smart. We want the people who just don't get it yet to know that law enforcement officers will be out there fully enforcing the state's safety belt law - young and old, pickups and cars, urban and rural, day and night. They'd rather write tickets than see people injured or dead in a crash down the road. Louisiana has united with traffic safety advocates throughout the five state region to convince pickup truck drivers and passengers to Buckle Up in Your Truck. Safety belt surveys show well over a million pickup drivers and passengers in these States are still not buckling up. In 2004, 1,247 pickup occupants died in Arkansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana, where there were 188 deaths.Pickup drivers mistakenly believe they are safer in their trucks than in a car, said Chakiris. But pickups are twice as likely to roll over as passenger cars in fatal crashes and nearly half of the pickup deaths in the region involved a rollover. Wearing your safety belt reduces the risk of dying in a rollover crash by up to 80 percent.