by Matthew L. Wald, New York Times
WASHINGTON - Forget warning young drivers that driving without a seat belt can kill them. Those who still do not buckle up, safety officials say, are more likely to be moved by a threat that scares them more than death: a traffic ticket.
So in the annual spring seat belt campaign that begins on Monday and will run through Memorial Day, the word will go out on MTV and World Wrestling Federation broadcasts: more than 11,000 police agencies nationwide are promising strict enforcement of seat belt laws. Twenty-eight states have adopted the “Click It or Ticket” campaign that North Carolina originated.
For years, safety officials have cited statistics showing that wearing seat belts cuts the risk of death by half, and the rate of use has gradually risen, to about 72 percent today. But teenagers are a major exception, and experts say they are hard to reach, partly because they do not believe they will be hurt or killed in a crash.
“The people most at risk will deny the risk, especially if it is too graphic,” said Chuck Hurley, executive director of the Air Bag and Seat Belt Safety Campaign.
The new campaign, Mr. Hurley said, “doesn’t require them to confront the fact that they are not immortal.”
Dr. Jeffrey Runge, a former emergency room doctor who is the administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration agreed that “for some reason, teens feel like they’re indestructible.”
“Talk to them about risk, that’s like talking to a wall,” Dr. Runge said. We have to have different strategies.”
Speaking of teenagers, he said: “Death is a remote possibility in his brain. But getting a ticket and having to face his old man, that’s a much more timely consequence.”
A quarter of teenage drivers have a crash in their first six months of driving, he said.
A new 30-second television commercial features a youth with a shiny black 4x4 pickup truck, his girlfriend and a stern state trooper.
“These guys are out in force, especially around Memorial Day, looking for young drivers who blow off the belt,” says the driver, gesturing toward the trooper. The young driver tells viewers to buckle up, “if not to save yourself, then to save yourself a ticket.”
The federal government has allocated $10 million for advertising.
In a new approach, the authorities are even sending volunteer teenagers into online chat rooms to gossip about the enforcement drive. The teenagers have visited chat rooms on America Online, Madhive.com, Bet .com, MTV.Com and Gurl.com.
Seat belt use among young drivers is lower than for older ones, although officials are not sure by how much. Highway workers collect statistics on use by observing cars at intersections, but have no way to tell the precise age of the people they observe. The workers also count mostly in daylight hours.
“That’s not when teenagers have crashes,” Mr. Hurley said.
Fatal accidents provide one reliable way to determine the use of seat belts and the age of a driver. An analysis by the New York State Police showed that in 2000, the last year for which statistics are available, 52 percent of the teenagers killed were not wearing seat belts, double the 26 percent beltless rate among all people killed in crashes.
The statistics were cited in a letter sent by the State Police and the State Education Department to all school superintendents in the state, with a request that they announce to students that the police would be looking for unbuckled teenagers, beginning on Monday.
Fines vary around the country; the letter noted that in New York, the fine was up to $50, plus $35 in court costs, for each violation. Drivers are also responsible for passengers under 16, with each one who is caught unbuckled constituting a separate violation.