Beginning November 21 through the 29th, Canton Police Department will participate in Michigan's well-known Click it or Ticket safety belt enforcement program. Extra patrol officers will be on duty, specifically enforcing seatbelt use by drivers and passengers. The focus of the Click it or Ticket campaign is to increase awareness of and compliance with Michigan's safety belt and child passenger safety laws.

In Michigan, state law requires:

• All front seat passengers to be buckled up
• All passengers under age 16 to be buckled up, in all seating positions
• All children under age 4 to be in an approved child safety seat, in all positions

Michigan's safety belt law allows police officers to stop a motorist solely for not wearing a safety belt in the front seat of a vehicle. Police officers can also stop a motorist if a child age 4 through 15 is not properly restrained no matter where they are riding in a vehicle. The law also requires all children under the age of 4 to be properly restrained in an approved child safety seat.

The goal of the program is to get the word out: Safety belts save lives! By providing strict enforcement of safety belt and child passenger safety laws, Canton Police Department hopes to bring awareness to the community. Traffic crashes are devastating; using safety belts can prevent serious injury and even death in a crash. In this country we lose the equivalent of a fully loaded 737 airplane each day on our highways due to traffic crashes. 1,279 persons were killed and 112,484 persons injured in traffic crashes in Michigan during 2002. Of those people killed, 40% were not wearing a safety belt. Studies show that 3 out of 5 of these victims likely would have survived if they had buckled up.

For more information on the Click it or Ticket enforcement program, contact the Canton Police Department at 734/394-5400.