Dozens of Oklahoma law enforcement agencies are participating in the "Click It or Ticket" seatbelt crackdown now through June 3.
Oklahoma Highway Safety Office Director Paul Harris said there will be zero tolerance for people not wearing seatbelts, but tickets aren't the intent.
"So many times we hear about the enforcement part, we’re trying to raise money or we’re trying to infringe on people’s rights. That is not the case," Harris said. "We’re all Oklahomans. We love Oklahoma, and we want Oklahomans to be safe so that we can have you around for years and years."
St. John Trauma Medical Director Dr. Michael Charles said many of the roughly 2,500 major trauma patients that come into eastern Oklahoma emergency rooms each year were in car crashes.
"Rarely do we take care of someone severely injured who has worn their seatbelt. Always, we take care of somebody that didn’t wear their seatbelt that was ejected that either has a life-threatening injury or that actually don’t make it," Charles said.
Kimberly Green Yates said seatbelts are the only reason she, her two daughters and her then-fiancé survived a 2011 crash with a semi going 80 miles per hour on the Turner Turnpike. She was trapped for 81 minutes and suffered broken bones, burns and a brain injury but said first responders told her they'd never seen someone survive the kind of crash they were in.
"Seatbelts do make a difference. They should be nonnegotiable in your life. There is no such thing as a quick trip down the block or just a run to the store when you should not wear your seatbelt," Green Yates said.
In 2016, 224 people in Oklahoma died in crashes when they weren’t wearing seatbelts. Many of those victims were ejected from their vehicles. People in pickup trucks are less likely to wear seatbelts than people in passenger cars.
