Seat-belt use saves lives and money

Memorial Day weekend, one of the year’s busiest travel times, this year falls in the middle of a two-week campaign in the state to crack down on motorists who think they can drive with little risk of being ticketed after sundown. Nighttime Click It or Ticket enforcement patrols are out in force this weekend and until June 1 to slap unbelted drivers and passengers with tickets carrying $124 fines.

These nighttime campaigns, which began last year, are a logical extension of the daytime Click It or Ticket crackdowns conducted periodically since 2002. Fatal accidents are four times more likely to occur at nighttime, and fewer of those victims in Washington are buckled up, according to the National Highway Safety Administration.

We’ve heard plenty of reader complaints about a nanny government dictating the use of seat belts over the years. But the fact is, the great majority of Washington drivers have taken well to the law. Since 2002, the year the state’s 1986 seat-belt statute became a primary law, allowing authorities to stop drivers whose only violation is failure to buckle up, compliance has increased more than 12 percent. The state’s seat-belt compliance rate now is 94.6 percent, second highest in the nation.

This high rate of compliance benefits all Washingtonians. Seat belts are saving 36 lives in the state every year, according to the Washington Traffic Safety Commission. Annual dollar savings for the state are likely significant, given national estimates of what we pay for injured drivers who didn’t buckle up.

The National Safety Council has reported that taxpayers are providing more than $14 billion a year to pay the medical bills of people who choose not use seat belts. This is because, on average, these injured motorists pay less than 30 percent of the total cost of their medical care. Everyone helps make up the remaining 70 percent through higher automobile and health insurance premiums and various public assistance programs funded with state and federal taxes. The Safety Council estimates that every driver who buckles up is paying an additional auto insurance premium of $40 per year to help pay the bills of those people who do not buckle up.

Washington’s tough seat belt law is good public policy. And the extra police and state troopers on the roads this weekend are good news for Washingtonians. They’re working to protect both our lives and pocketbooks.