Belleville Police Kick Off Seat Belt Crackdown: ‘Click It Or Ticket’

BELLEVILLE, NJ — Law enforcement officers from the Belleville Police Department will be cracking down on unbuckled motorists and passengers for two weeks as part of the national “Click it or Ticket” campaign.

Beginning May 22 and running through June 4, the annual campaign uses “high-visibility seat belt checkpoints and saturation patrols” – in combination with local and national publicity efforts – to spotlight the “lifesaving value of seat belts.”

According to the New Jersey Division of Highway Traffic Safety, in 2022 there were 694 people in the state killed in traffic crashes. About 40 percent of the motor vehicle occupants who died in these crashes were not wearing a seat belt. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports that seat belt use reduces the risk of serious injury or death in a crash by 45 percent.

In New Jersey, a key focus of this year’s Click It or Ticket campaign is to promote seat belt usage by adults in all seating positions in the vehicle, both front and rear seats. The front seat belt usage rate in New Jersey currently stands at 92.97 percent, authorities said. However, adults riding in rear seats are buckling up at a significantly lower rate: only 48 percent, according to the most recent surveys.

During the 2022 Click it or Ticket campaign, 145 New Jersey police agencies participated in the two-week initiative. As a result of the effort, law enforcement officers issued 8,373 seat belt citations, 3,315 speeding summonses and made 278 impaired driving arrests, authorities said.

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