According to the Mississippi Department of Transportation, the Memorial Day weekend is one of the busiest travel weekends of the year.
With that in mind, MDOT would like to remind motorists to “Click It or Ticket.”
From May 18 through 31, law enforcement agencies across the nation will be boosting enforcement as part of the national seatbelt enforcement campaign, a MDOT release states.
“Every day, unbuckled motorists are losing their lives in motor vehicle crashes,” MDOT Executive Director Melinda McGrath said in the release. “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 Traffic Safety Administration, almost half of the 21,132 vehicle passengers killed in crashes in 2013 were unrestrained, the release states. From the hours of 6 p.m. to 5:59 a.m., the number of fatalities climbs to 59 percent.
One focus of the “Click it or Ticket” campaign is nighttime enforcement so law enforcement agencies will be taking a no-excuses approach to seatbelt law enforcement, writing citations day and night, the release states. The maximum penalty for seatbelt violation in Mississippi is a misdemeanor with a $25 fine.
In Mississippi, 613 people died as a result of traffic crashes in 2013, the release states. Fifty-four percent of that number involved unrestrained male passengers, while 41 percent were females.
Learn more about “Click It or Ticket” at www.nhtsa.gov/ciot.