No matter how large your waist is, you should consider strapping your seat belt around it between now and June 6 – and hopefully during every car ride thereafter.
As advertised on the radio and seen on TV, a national “Click It or Ticket” campaign is currently under way. It’s meant to encourage drivers to use their seat belts, and Union City is one of the towns to win a $5,000 grant to participate.
Local police will be fining drivers who are not using their seatbelts this week, with no second chances. “It’s a grant issued by the New Jersey Division of Highway Traffic Safety to increase the use of seatbelts by drivers, passengers, and child restraint seats,” said Lt. Nilsa Gordon, grant coordinator for the Union City Police Department.
“Click It or Ticket” is a national program that has been running for the last three years. According to the division’s official website, about 267 police agencies across New Jersey participated in the May 2003 campaign. As a result of this program, seat belt usage in the state rose to an all-time high of 81.2 percent.
“The entire country will be participating in this enforcement program, and we’ve been doing seatbelt enforcement campaigns for the last 10 years under different names,” said Bob Gaydosh, spokesperson for the Division of Highway Traffic Safety with the Attorney General’s Office in Trenton.
What is ‘Click It or Ticket?’
The ‘Click It or Ticket’ campaign will have a zero-tolerance policy for violators.
“The officers [of Union City] will be issuing for violations, and there will be no warnings,” said Gordon.
The enforcement guidelines will increase the threat of a traffic ticket by providing more patrolling officers specifically focusing on seat belt violations. They will look at the driver, front passenger, and proper restraints for children under the age of 17. There will be a separate $45 fine for every violation in the car, and additional fines for any other traffic violation the motorists may have been stopped for.
As the grant coordinator for Union City, Gordon was responsible for submitting the application and survey to the state in order for the city to take part in the program. Initially a pre-survey is done to monitor the level of adherence to the laws in an area, so it can be assessed where the program should be best implemented. After the program is completed, a post survey is done to assess the results.
“That’s the whole idea about the program,” said Gaydosh. “A post survey is done presumably at the same location to see if there’s any positive change.”
The pre-survey for Union City was done on April 30, monitoring the intersection of 38th Street and Bergenline Avenue. At that time, about 200 cars were observed during evening rush hour. Out of those 200 cars, the survey documents that 101 were wearing seat belts and 99 were not.
According to Gaydosh, the survey places Union City at about 50 percent, which is well below state average. This program hopes to spread awareness and increase the usage of seatbelts in an effort to keep motorists and their passengers safe in New Jersey and across the nation.
“With the combination of seatbelts and airbags we can save some lives,” said Gordon.
“This is the biggest seat belt campaign to date in the state,” said Gaydosh, who explained that approximately 340 departments are participating in New Jersey this year. “We’re funding grants to 200 of them, five in Hudson County, including Jersey City, Union City, Bayonne, Kearny, and Harrison.”
The $5,000 overtime grant is going to cover 100 hours of additional police power, which will be divided among different officers at different times and dates. The officers will be working on an overtime rate of $50 an hour maximum.
“The Union City police are staffing extra officers during certain times, especially looking into the times there would be the highest vehicle traffic,” said Lt. George Prunes, who coordinated the personnel and is the officer in charge of details. “There will be patrolling officers in vehicles during the two-week period it has to be enforced, and we’re going to step it up on the weekends.”
Prunes would also like to assure the residents this will provide additional officer presence on this campaign, but it will not take away from the service to the community.
“We’re going to be cracking down on offenders, and hopefully the people will realize the seriousness of their own safety by wearing their seatbelts,” said Gordon.
The campaign will run through June 6.