Click It or Ticket Starts Monday

Starting Monday, more than 385 law enforcement agencies in Wisconsin will be out patrolling streets and highways for the national Click It or Ticket safety belt campaign. 

This is the largest coordinated law enforcement mobilazation ever in Wisconsin, according to a press release by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. 

From the press release:

“Click It or Ticket is more than just a slogan for law enforcement agencies. Whenever officers observe an unbelted driver or passenger, they will stop the vehicle and issue a citation,” says Wisconsin State Patrol Major Dan Lonsdorf, director of the WisDOT Bureau of Transportation Safety. “Last year in Wisconsin, there were nearly 120,000 convictions for failure to fasten safety belts, which was an all-time high. Among all traffic violations, safety belt convictions in Wisconsin were second only to speeding convictions.”

Although buckling up—every trip, every time—is undeniably the best possible protection against being ejected from a vehicle or thrown around violently inside it during a traffic crash, too many people are killed or injured needlessly because they were unbuckled, according to Lonsdorf.

In Wisconsin, about one out of five motorists does not buckle up. Wisconsin’s safety belt use rate of 79 percent lags behind the 85 percent national average for safety belt use. Wisconsin is also behind neighboring states, including Minnesota, Michigan and Illinois, which have safety belt use rates of more than 90 percent.

In Wisconsin and throughout the nation, teen safety belt use is much lower than other age groups. Not buckling up coupled with a lack of driving experience is a major reason why traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for young people nationwide. 

“The goal of Click It or Ticket is not to write more tickets but to save lives and reduce injuries. We hope that the intensified enforcement efforts during Click It or Ticket and throughout the year will motivate people to buckle up so that we can reduce the number of preventable traffic deaths to zero in Wisconsin,” Lonsdorf says. “But if voluntary compliance fails and people continue to ignore the safety belt law as well as common sense, we will stop and ticket them.”