Don’t buckle your seat belt or have your child properly secured in a child safety seat or booster seat? Then consider this your warning: next time will be a ticket.

Beginning Sunday, March 16, Virginia State Police will be teaming up with local police and sheriff’s departments across the Commonwealth to participate in a Click It or Ticket mini-enforcement campaign. Motorists can expect to see a heightened awareness and vigilance by Virginia State Police troopers for seat belt violators during the week-long safety blitz.

Click It or Ticket is a high-visibility enforcement program designed to raise safety belt usage and save Virginians from death and serious injury on the streets and highways.

Seat Belt Facts:

- Following the May 2007 Click It or Ticket campaign, Virginia’s statewide safety belt compliance rate was 79.9 percent, just shy of the 2007 usage goal of 82 percent.

- According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, of the passenger vehicle occupants involved in fatal crashes in Virginia, the 55 percent who were restrained survived.

- When worn correctly, seat belts have proven to reduce the risk of fatal injury to front-seat passenger car occupants by 45 percent, and 60 percent in pickup trucks, SUVs and mini-vans.

- Nearly one in four Virginians still fail to regularly wear their seat belts when driving or riding in a vehicle.

- At least 67 people killed in traffic crashes in the first 60 days of this year in Virginia were not buckled up.

“Lives are saved on our highways when people use their seat belts and properly restrain children, toddlers and infants,” says Col. W. Steven Flaherty, Virginia State Police Superintendent. “Are you Virginia’s next traffic fatality? Choose not to buckle up and you have your answer.”

The importance of occupant restraints is highlighted in Virginia’s Highway Safety Challenge. The Highway Safety Challenge is a cooperative effort between the Virginia Department of Transportation, Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, Virginia State Police and several other state and private traffic safety advocates.

Through its five calls to action, the safety campaign challenges Virginians of all ages to make responsible driving a priority:

- Buckle Up

- Avoid distractions

- Share the road

- Drive drug & alcohol free

- Obey speed limit