With Memorial Day and summer traveling looming on the horizon, law enforcement officers use a variety of educational programs in an effort to help save lives.

One is the “Click-It or Ticket” campaign. It basically promotes the use of seat belts or other types of restraint, especially for children.

Statistics tell law enforcement officers, all of whom want to find live and healthy people when they respond to vehicle crashes, that most people die in traffic accidents because they weren’t wearing seat belts.

Those who suffer most are children.

Although preventing fatalities is the major impetus behind Click-It or Ticket, wearing seat belts are just as important, if not more so, at preventing serious injuries during low-speed crashes.

Not only does the law say you must wear your seat belt, it just makes common sense that you would protect yourself and those you love by wearing them.

No matter how cautious or how good a driver you are, crashes happen.

Even if you are attentive to the road and are well schooled in defensive driving, if someone else makes a mistake there are times you can’t avoid the crash.

Seatbelts are the first line of defense against serious injury.

Law enforcement officers do not like finding bodies at crash scenes and they know how important seat belts are.

They devised Click-It or Ticket not as a means to write more tickets, but as a way to heighten awareness among motorists of the importance of wearing seat belts.

Make the officers manning the traffic checkpoints happy by having your seatbelt on. They’d much rather see you wearing a seatbelt than take the time to write a ticket.

– The Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald