MICHIGAN — Thursday marks the start of the 'Click it or Ticket' campaign across Michigan, which involves multiple police and sheriff agencies. For the next two weeks. police agencies around the state will be looking out for violators.
Michigan State Police says October is the second deadliest month in Michigan when it comes to car crashes, with nearly 200 unbuckled passengers killed last year.
"We’re going to be enforcing any violations of Michigan seat belt law over the next couple of weeks," said Sergeant Mike VanDenBosch, with the Ottawa County with Traffic Services Unit. "The goal is to reduce fatalities and serious injury crashes where seat belts aren’t used."
Deputies with the Ottawa County Sheriff Office say they will be targeting areas with the most crashes.
"We’ve targeted our enforcement areas based on our traffic crash statistics," VanDenBosch said. "We take a lot of crashes in the Holland Township, Georgetown Township, Allendale Township, and then Talmadge Township, concentrated around Grand Valley State University."
The sheriff's office says it's training its deputies to take a zero tolerance approach when pulling violators over.
VanDenBosch says seat belts are the one line of defense that could prevent you from being thrown from your car in a crash.
"You see a lot of people who wear their seat belt, the shoulder belt, over or under their arm, that’s a violation of the law so any way that you’re wearing it other than the way it’s designed and tested is also a violation," he said.
"Statistics prove that you are more likely to survive a car crash when you’re seat belted," he said.
The Ottawa County Sheriff's Office says while seat belt use has gone up in our state, they do see violators. With this plan, they hope to reduce the number of serious injury or deadly crashes overall.
The campaign runs through the end of the month.
