Click It or Ticket

As summer events are planned it will most likely involve traveling in a motor vehicle. Your safety or life may depend on what you do when you enter that vehicle.

Traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for teens and young adults nationwide. Consistent safety-belt use is the single most effective way to protect people from being ejected from a vehicle or thrown around violently inside the vehicle during a crash. Teens are needlessly killed or injured in large part because of a lack of safety-belt use combined with inexperience behind the wheel.

Effective May 21 through June 3, the UW-Parkside Police and Public Safety Department along with hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the state of Wisconsin will be participating in the national “Click It or Ticket” mobilization.

The goal is to save lives and reduce injuries through voluntary compliance with Wisconsin's mandatory seat belt law. However if you are stopped by an officer for a traffic violation, and don't have a seat belt on, expect to get a ticket. Not just the driver, but passengers as well.

Wisconsin’s safety-belt use rate is approximately 89.4 percent, which is the all-time high for the state. However, Wisconsin is still far lower than the national average of 90.1 percent. In 2017, 47 percent of drivers and passengers killed in Wisconsin crashes were not wearing safety belts.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board, motorists who are hurt or killed because they didn’t buckle up create economic burden, such as medical expenses, for which the rest of society pays nearly 75 percent through higher insurance premiums, taxes, and other public funding.

The "Click It or Ticket" campaign combines intensified safety-belt enforcement with a public-awareness campaign funded by the federal government to help reduce the number of motorists killed in traffic crashes. The only way to reach the state’s goal of “Zero in Wisconsin” is with the help of everyone who operates or is a passenger of a vehicle.