Bucks Co. High School Seatbelt Challenge Underway

BUCKS COUNTY, PA —The 17th Annual Bucks County High School Seatbelt Safety Challenge & Video PSA Challenge is now underway.

TMA Bucks, the county's transportation agency, has launched its challenge to see which Bucks County high school will have the highest seatbelt usage this school year.

The challenge is presented by NJM Insurance and powered by Comcast.

Baseline surveys of student driver seatbelt use have been conducted at every public and private high school in Bucks County, TMA Bucks said.

Surveys were conducted safely and without the knowledge of the student body or administration to ensure the most accurate data sampling. Each school’s result is being forwarded to them with an invitation to participate in the challenge.

“Our Bucks County High School Seatbelt Safety Challenge continues to deliver strong results as for the first time we saw each school achieve 80 percent or above in seatbelt compliance for the baseline surveys,” TMA Bucks executive director Stephen Noll said. “The total combined school average percentage was also over 90 percent for the sixth time in the last seven surveys conducted in the fall. The students continue to rise to the challenge but there is still work to be done and we think our high school student drivers can continue to get more students buckling up!”

The Bucks County High School Seatbelt Safety Challenge encourages participating high schools to raise their student driver seatbelt usage over the year as various student groups at each school work to actively promote seatbelt use within the student body using posters, T-shirts, school-wide announcements, and other creative messages.

In the spring, an unannounced follow-up survey is conducted at each of the participating schools. The school with the highest overall percentage in seatbelt use and the school with the greatest percentage increase in seatbelt use are both awarded with perpetual trophy plaques and $500 cash grants for safety-related use by the school.

Back again this year as part of the initiative is the Teen Driver Safety Video PSA Challenge powered by Comcast.

As part of the Seatbelt Challenge, all Bucks County high schools have the opportunity to produce and submit a 30-second video PSA on teen driver safety. It can deal with any aspect including seatbelts, texting, distracted driving, speeding, or impaired driving.

The school selected as the winner will get a $500 cash grant and their video will play on Comcast networking. Videos must be uploaded to YouTube with the link emailed to dave@bctma.com by April 3, 2024, to be eligible to win.

NJM Insurance is the presenting sponsor this year with supporting sponsorships coming from AAA Mid-Atlantic, Automotive Training Center, Bucks County Community College, Jefferson Bucks Hospital, McMahon (a Bowman company), Stark & Stark, and Visit Bucks County.

The TMA Bucks Community Traffic Safety Program has free programming available to all Bucks County high schools on any highway safety topic such as distracted driving, impaired driving, seatbelt safety, pedestrian safety, and bicycle safety. Please reach out to Carly Wible at carly@bctma.com for more information or to schedule programming.