Click it or Ticket

About the Program
Click It or Ticket is a high visibility enforcement program designed to raise safety belt usage and save people from death and serious injury on the streets and highways. Virginia's statewide safety belt compliance rate is currently 80.5%. The goal of the 2011 Click It or Ticket Mobilization is to raise the rate to at least 83.7%; however the goal of our department is 100%.

The campaign consists of awareness through strong educational messages mostly on television and radio stations in local areas, strict enforcement, and numerous public appearances by departments in support of the program. Consistently, surveys are completed to determine the current safety belt usage rate.

Facts

• Airbags do not replace the need for seat belts. When used with seat belts, airbags further reduce the risk of death or injury in the event of a crash.
• Every hour someone dies in America simply because they did not buckle up. Failure to buckle up contributes to more fatalities than any other single traffic safety-related behavior.
• In Virginia, 4,342 people were injured in crashes due to being unrestrained in 2010.
• Virginia has seen steady decline in traffic related fatalities, however, data from 2010 indicates that there were a total of 740 fatalities, of those, 314 were not restrained at the time of the crash.
• When a driver is buckled with a seat belt, children are likely to be buckled 87% of the time. When a driver is not buckled in a seat belt, children are likely to be buckled only 24% of the time.