'Teen Click It Or Ticket' Campaign Makes Stop In Round Rock

ROUND ROCK, TX — The “Teen Click It or Ticket” interactive experience will be on site at a Round Rock high school this week as a way of heightening awareness of the potentially life-saving tactic of using seat belts while driving.

An accompaniment to the interactive display serves as a visually dramatic reminder of the need to always buckle up. It's a depiction of a mangled truck involved in a rollover crash two teens survived, thanks only to their use of seat belts.

This is all planned at Cedar Ridge High School, 2801 Gattis School Rd., from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Wednesday, May 15. The local high school is one of only six campuses in Texas targeted during the annual "Teen Click It or Ticket" campaign. An interactive virtual reality and augmented reality experience were created to help drill the message home for the need of potentially life-saving seat belt use.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration statistics point to the need in targeting young drivers with such awareness. According to the agency, vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death among teenagers, with teen drivers involved in twice as many fatal crashes as adult drivers. Last year in Texas, 42 percent of teens killed in crashes were not wearing a seat belt, according to national statistics.

Another recent event dramatically pointed to the importance of seat belt use. On May 1 in downtown Austin, officials unveiled a sculpture capturing a real-life rollover crash that killed a Texas teen who wasn't wearing her seat belt. Titled "Kailee's Crash," the gripping sculpture unveiled May 1 at Republic Square Park, 422 Guadalupe St., doubles as frozen-in-air reenactment of a car wreck that claimed the life 16-year-old Kailee Mills on Oct. 28, 2017.

The teen had unbuckled her seat belt for just a brief moment to move to the backseat for a selfie before she was killed when the car in which she traveled crashed. Her friends, who were wearing their seat belts prior to the wreck, sustained minor injuries.

Related story: Austin Sculpture Dramatically Illustrates Need To Buckle Up

Her still-grieving parents have since taken on the cause of encouraging others to use their seat belts to avert further tragedy and suffering. During remarks to those gathered, Kailee's dad fought back tears in describing his late daughter, who excelled academically while planning on becoming a doctor. He urged others to always wear their seat belts, noting fines are assessed for non-use. He expressed aloud how he wished it merely took paying a fine to bring his little girl back as his wife silently stood beside him.

Texas law requires everyone in a vehicle to be buckled up, including passengers in the back seat. Unbuckled drivers and passengers face fines and court costs of up to $200 per person.
The Teen Click It or Ticket campaign is a key component of #EndTheStreakTX, a broader social media and word-of-mouth effort that encourages drivers to make safer choices while behind the wheel. Here's a grim statistic: Since Nov. 8, 2000, at least one person has died on Texas roadways every single day. #EndTheStreakTX asks all Texans to commit to driving safely to help end the streak of daily deaths on our roadways.