Around Town

ACPD’s ‘Click It or Ticket’ Campaign Starts Next Week

Old Arlington County police car paint job (file photo)If for some reason you drive around without a seatbelt on, it could cost you your life. Next week, there’s a greater likelihood that it will at least cost you $25.

From Monday, May 23 to Monday, June 6 — it’s timed to coincide with the Memorial Day holiday — Arlington County will again be participating in the nationwide Click It or Ticket campaign.

ACPD will be “stepping up enforcement” of the state seatbelt law during that time.

From a press release:

Once again, the Arlington County Police Department is reminding motorists to Click It or Ticket. As part of the national seat belt enforcement campaign, law enforcement agencies around the country will be stepping up enforcement from May 23 to June 6, just ahead of one of the busiest travel weekends of the year.

Every day, unbuckled motorists are losing their lives in motor vehicle crashes. As we approach Memorial Day weekend and the summer vacation season, we want to make sure people are doing the one thing that can save them in a crash, buckling up.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, nearly half of the 21,132 passenger vehicle occupants killed in crashes in 2013 were unrestrained. At night from 6 p.m. to 5:59 a.m., that number soared to 59 percent of those killed. That’s why one focus of the Click It or Ticket campaign is nighttime enforcement. Participating law enforcement agencies will be taking a no-excuses approach to seat belt law enforcement, writing citations day and night.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2014, there was one fatality every 16 minutes, one person injured every 13 seconds, one property damage crash every 7 seconds, and 1 law enforcement-reported crash every 5 seconds.