Holiday Weekend Crackdown Slated
By Jessie Halladay, Louisville Courier-Journal (Kentucky)
William Booth almost never wore a seat belt until a police officer knocked on his door one June morning and told him that his wife had died after being thrown from her Ford Explorer on the Shawnee Expressway.
Delores Booth had not been wearing her seat belt. Now her husband will not drive or ride without one.
“I can’t even imagine getting on the expressway now or even pulling out of my driveway” without being buckled up, he said.
Delores Booth was one of 48 people killed in crashes in Louisville this year. Thirty-three were not wearing seatbelts.
During the past two years, at least two-thirds of the people killed in vehicle crashes in Louisville were not wearing seat belts despite a state law making it illegal to drive without them.
The rate is not much better for all of Kentucky.
Last year, 509 of the 928 people killed on the state’s public roads were not wearing seat belts, according to the Kentucky Transportation Center’s annual collision report.
Preliminary reports for this year show that of Kentucky’s 951 fatalities, 580 were not using seat belts. Some were motorcyclists, said Capt. Brad Bates of the Kentucky State Police.
Those statistics are unacceptable, said Lt. Kelly Jones, who heads the Louisville Metro Police traffic division.
“Where else would we accept those kinds of numbers?” he asked.
“We as a society have come to accept the fact that people are going to die in car crashes.”
In an effort to lower the number of crashes and promote wearing seat belts, Jones said, all 21 members of the traffic division will be out today enforcing traffic laws trying to keep New Year’s traffic deaths down.
Kentucky State Police also will be out in full force this weekend, running checkpoints and road patrols, Bates said.
But officers will not pull people over just for not wearing seat belts.
Kentucky law allows officers to write tickets for not using seat belts only if the motorist has been stopped for another offense.
About 70percent of crashes involve drivers or passengers who are not wearing seat belts, which should be a “red flag” to drivers, Jones said.
“Seventy percent, come on, that’s terrible,” he said.
Research shows that wearing a seat belt can reduce the risk of fatal injury to front-seat occupants by 45percent and the risk of moderate-to-critical injury by 50percent, according to a report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
But the same report shows that nationally, a majority — 56percent — of fatally injured vehicle occupants were not wearing seat belts.
Bates said a primary enforcement law would help spur seat-belt use.
People would be motivated to buckle up if they could be stopped for not wearing a seat belt, he said.
Jones agreed.
“We wouldn’t get them all, but we would certainly get a significant number of them,” he said.
While a Kentucky Transportation Center study earlier this year shows seat-belt use has increased to 66percent of all drivers, fatalities involving the lack of belts remains high, Bates said.
“Seat-belt usage has gone up, just not like we’d like it to,” he said.
“Unfortunately, we haven’t found the magic solution.”
National estimates show that if Kentucky had a primary law, seat-belt use would increase by an additional 11percent, which would save 62lives, prevent 740 serious injuries and save $148million in medical, insurance and other costs, Bates said.
Part of persuading people to wear their seat belts is to educate them, both Bates and Jones said.
Rose Geiman of Cold Spring in Northern Kentucky speaks regularly to young people about the importance of buckling up.
Her 16-year-old son died in a crash in November 2000. He was not wearing a seat belt.
“If you don’t have it on, you’re asking to die,” said Geiman, who hopes she can persuade people to fasten up.
“I want them to know that maybe Jimmy would still be here, and I wouldn’t be crying all the time,” she said.
“Maybe I can save somebody’s life, but I sure wish I could have saved his.”