Special efforts statewide Thanksgiving week for seat belt enforcement

Press staff report

A new special Traffic Enforcement Program (sTEP) will begin Sunday and run through the Thanksgiving weekend to help insure safer holiday travel, according to the Floyd County Sheriff’s Office.

The Sheriff’s Office reported on its Facebook page that special emphasis on the Iowa seat belt law will take place from Nov. 19-26, with officers statewide putting extra attention on efforts to enforce and spread awareness of the law.

The Charles City Police Department announced it also will be taking part in the sTEP effort next week.

Iowa’s seat belt law is as follows:

• Seatbelts must be worn by all front seat passengers.

• All rear seat passengers under age 18 must be belted.

• All children under age 1 and less than 20 pounds must be in a rear-facing restraint system; children age 1-6 must be in a safety or booster seat restrained with a seat belt; and children 6-11 must be secured in a restraint system or seat belt.

Thanksgiving is one of the busiest travel times of the year, and every year people are killed in traffic accidents where the severity of the accident could have been reduced by all passengers wearing seat belts, according to the Iowa Department of Public Safety.

“The simplest and most effective thing anyone can do to be safe while riding in a motor vehicle is to wear a seat belt,” the state department said..

Nationwide in 2015 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recorded 301 passenger vehicle occupants killed in traffic crashes during the Thanksgiving weekend and only 50 percent of those killed were buckled.

In Iowa there were five fatalities during the Thanksgiving weekend in both 2015 and 2016.

“If you are ejected from a vehicle in a crash, the odds are high that you will not survive,” according to the NHTSA. “In 2015, 80 percent of the people totally ejected from vehicles in crashes were killed.”

Only 1 percent of occupants wearing seat belts were ejected, compared to 30 percent of those who were unbuckled, according to the NHTSA. “These deaths could have been completely prevented with the simple click of a seat belt,” it said.

The Iowa State Patrol and more than 170 local and county enforcement agencies participate in Iowa’s special Traffic Enforcement Program, conducting high visibility traffic enforcement with an emphasis on seat belt violators and public outreach to encourage seat belt and child restraint use.