By Staff
Staff Reports, Hartselle Enquirer
Morgan County drivers be warned: click it or ticket is back.
From now through Sept. 8, Alabama law enforcement agencies will conduct checkpoints, line patrols, road blocks and saturation patrols to step up enforcement as part of a Labor Day Click It or Ticket seat belt safety campaign.
This is the fourth Click It or Ticket campaign for the state in the past two years.
"Although Alabama's current seat belt usage rate is 79 percent, there remains work to be done because over 20 percent of the population still refuses to buckle up," said Colonel James Alexander, director of the Alabama Department of Public Safety. "This is especially true for men ages 16 to 24.
"The seat belt usage rate for women in Alabama is 91 percent while the rate for men is only 68 percent. Therefore, this campaign will place a special emphasis on getting the male population to buckle up."
According to state officials, targeting specific audiences has proven successful in previous Click It or Ticket campaigns.
Because past research indicated that minorities used seat belts at a significantly lower rate than whites, past campaigns emphasized minority outreach. The recent Memorial Day Click It or Ticket campaign informed the Latino community with Spanish TV and radio commercials, Spanish brochures and a Spanish Web site.
Click It or Ticket information, in both English and Spanish, was also sent to every public school in the state.
"We plan to use the same outreach and education methods on young men that we used in the Latino community," Col. Alexander said. "Hopefully, by spreading the word that seat belts save lives to young men, we can increase the male seat belt usage rate in Alabama."
Prior to the Memorial Day Click It or Ticket campaign, Alabama's Latino seat belt usage rate was 60 percent. Since then, the Latino seat belt usage rate has increased an astounding 12 percentage points to 72 percent.