Law enforcement to step up seat belt enforcement

Mt. Pleasant?s Police Department, along with other Iowa and local law enforcement agencies across the nation, will be stepping up seat belt enforcement.

Memorial Day weekend kicks off the busy summer season with many more families on the road. Iowa has one of the nation?s highest compliance rates at 94 percent. However, the remaining 6 percent of vehicle occupants account for approximately half of all traffic fatalities.

Law enforcement personnel say seat belts are the single most effective way to survive in an accident.

The Iowa Department of Public Safety and the Governor?s Traffic Safety Bureau would like to break the following seat belt myths (according to 2015 data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration):

? Pickup trucks will not protect you in a crash if you are not wearing a seat belt. Sixty-two percent of pickup truck occupants who were killed were not buckled. That compares to 42 percent of passenger car occupants.

? Where you sit in a vehicle does not matter. Forty-seven percent of all front-seat passenger vehicle occupants killed in accidents were not wearing seat belts, but 57 percent of those killed in back seats were not restrained.

? County driving is not safer. Nationwide, there were 12,797 traffic fatalities on rural roads compared to 8,262 on urban streets. Fifty percent of those killed in rural crashes were unbuckled compared to 46 percent in urban crashes.

? Young drivers are not invincible and are dying at a disproportionate rate because they are not wearing seat belts, especially young males.

Law enforcement personnel remind motorists that buckling up is as simple as turning on a light switch. It should be an automatic action for everyone in the vehicle.

Day and night, front and back, law enforcement says click it or ticket. You may save a life.