High-visibility Enforcement
The year 2002 provided clear evidence that very intense safety belt
enforcement, backed up by heavy, well-targeted publicity, continues to
drive belt use up. It also demonstrated that Click
It or Ticket works
nationwide.
Operation ABC Mobilizations – New and Improved
As in the previous four years, NHTSA joined with the Air Bag & Seat
Belt Safety Campaign, the Highway Safety Offices of the States, the District
of Columbia, and Puerto Rico and over 12,000 law enforcement agencies
in two Operation ABC Mobilizations. The first centered on the Memorial
Day holiday; the second around Thanksgiving. As before, law enforcement
partners were committed to stopping and ticketing as many safety belt
and child passenger safety violators as they could find. Print, broadcast,
and other media partners across the country communicated this message
to the public.
However, in 2002, the mobilizations took on a significant new look. First,
they were longer. In past years, law enforcement mobilized for one week
during each holiday period. This year, NHTSA asked for a two-week effort,
and 35 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico responded to
this request. Second, they made extensive use of paid advertising. In
2001, the eight States of NHTSA’s Region IV experimented with paid
advertising to augment earned news coverage and public service announcements.
This year, 37 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico spent
over $9.8 million on paid ads in May, and another $3.5 million in November,
to get their message across. In most cases, that message was Click
It or Ticket. And most of the ads were aired on TV and radio programs known
to reach 18-34-year-old males, the lowest safety-belt-using demographic
group.
Operation ABC continued to receive support from Mothers Against Drunk
Driving (MADD), the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and
all major law enforcement associations, including the International Association
of Chiefs of Police (IACP), the National Sheriffs Association (NSA),
the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE),
and the Hispanic American Police Command Officers Association (HAPCOA).
More than 1,000 business and community organizations in all States gave
vocal and material support to the mobilizations, as did the Emergency
Nurses Association (ENA) and the National Safety Council (NSC).
The intensity and visibility of the 2002 mobilizations differed between
the Memorial Day and Thanksgiving events. Although the numbers of law
enforcement agencies participating were approximately the same for the
two waves, only about two-thirds as many safety belt checkpoints were
conducted in the fall as compared to the spring (12,000 versus 17,700,
based on reports from 37 States and Puerto Rico). Safety belt citations
in the reporting States totaled nearly 420,000 in the May mobilization,
but fell to fewer than 250,000 in November. In addition, the States collectively
spent nearly $10 million on their paid advertising campaigns in May,
but only about $3.5 million in November.
Click It or Ticket was the rallying cry of 29 States and the District
of Columbia in May, and of 31 States and the District of Columbia in
November. Most other States employed alternative enforcement-focused
messages such as “Buckled or Busted,” “No Exceptions,
No Excuses,” or “Buckle Up or Pay Up.” Comparing their
use rates for 2002 and 2001, the Click It or Ticket States enjoyed an
average increase of 3.1 percentage points. States that used alternative
messages had an average gain of less than 1 percentage point.
120 Million More Americans Heard the Message… and
Responded!
In May 2002, nearly 120 million Americans living in 22 States and the
District of Columbia saw and heard the Click It
or Ticket message for
the first time on their TVs and radios, and in their newspapers. That
is in addition to the residents of six of the Region IV States and Michigan,
who had seen and heard the message during the 2001 mobilizations. Safety
belt use among those newly exposed citizens increased by 3.9 percentage
points – more than 4.5 million Americans who buckled up in 2002!
In contrast, safety belt use in the other 28 States and Puerto Rico rose
by less than 1 percentage point.
Ten Click It or Ticket States achieved belt use gains in 2002 that were
at least 5 percentage points above their 2001 rates. Leading the group
were West Virginia (up 19.3 points), Vermont (17.5 points) and Washington
(10.0 points). Among States that did not deliver the Click
It or Ticket message, only Puerto Rico (up 7.4 points) and Minnesota (6.2 points)
exceeded gains of 5 percentage points. The three States with the largest
losses in belt use from 2001 to 2002 were all non-Click
It or Ticket messages in the May mobilization. They included Massachusetts (down 5.0
points), with the message “Please Buckle, It’s the Law”;
South Carolina (down 3.3 points), with the message “Fasten for
Life”; and Wisconsin (down 2.6 points), with the message “Click
It, Why Risk It.”
In 2002, the data were very clear: when fully implemented, Click
It or Ticket works! Other messages don’t work nearly as well.
Contrasting the Gains and Losses
As Table 1 shows, heavy enforcement, a clear message, and significant
publicity proved to be a winning combination in 2002.
Table 1
State |
Gain 01-02 |
Message |
Citations* |
Paid Media* |
West Virginia |
19.3 percent |
Click It or Ticket |
1.7 |
$135.80 |
Vermont |
17.5 percent |
Click It or Ticket |
2.1 |
$324.15 |
Washington** |
10.0 percent |
Click It or Ticket |
0.7 |
$85.35 |
Arkansas |
9.2 percent |
Click It or Ticket |
1.2 |
$128.70 |
Hawaii |
7.9 percent |
Click It or Ticket |
3.6 |
$95.47 |
Rhode Island |
7.6 percent |
Click It or Ticket |
0.9 |
$27.56 |
Puerto Rico*** |
7.4 percent |
Si Lo No Usas, No Hay Escusas |
10.9 |
$9.19 |
In Table 2, it is clear that an unfocused message, little or no paid
media and/or low levels of enforcement may result in safety belt use
decreases.
-5.0 percent |
Please Buckle Its the Law |
0.7 |
$0 |
-3.3 percent |
Fasten For Life |
0.9 |
$75.57 |
-2.6 percent |
Click It Why Risk It |
Not reported |
$93.88 |
-2.0 percent |
Click It or Ticket |
3.4 |
$67.30 |
-1.9 percent |
Buckle Up Now Virginia |
0.4 |
$14.29 |
-1.6 percent |
Click It or Ticket |
1.1 |
$35.35 |
-0.7 percent |
Click It or Ticket |
3.1 |
$59.54 |
-0.7 percent |
Buckle Up, No Excuses |
0.6 |
$0 |
* Citations are given in Tables 1 and 2 as safety
belt tickets per 100,000 residents. Similarly, Paid Media is expressed
as advertising purchases per 100,000 residents.
** Washington achieved a 10 percentage point increase with relatively
low levels of citations and paid media; however, much of the increase
was recorded after the State’s new primary law went into effect
subsequent to the May mobilization.
*** Puerto Rico’s paid media expenditures were noticeably lower
than those of other States that recorded substantial belt use increases,
although this is explained in part by the fact that media purchases
are substantially less expensive in the Commonwealth than on the
mainland; in addition, the extremely high level of ticketing appears
to have helped boost public awareness of the mobilization.
**** Although Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama combined the Click
It or Ticket message with reasonably high levels of enforcement,
their lower-than-average media purchases may have kept the message
from penetrating as effectively as was desired. |
An Additional Benefit of Safety Belt Enforcement
According to the San Antonio Express-News, Texas State Trooper Joe Hogue
thought he had just another routine Click It or
Ticket stop underway
when he spotted the unbuckled driver of a 2002 Nissan Altima on Interstate
35. Instead, he ended up seizing more than a million dollars. The 59-year-old
driver consented to a search of her vehicle, which resulted in Trooper
Hogue’s discovery of three duffel bags containing $1,440,000.
Indiana’s Enforcement Zones—A New Way
to Ticket Unbuckled Drivers
Indiana has successfully used enforcement zones to convince unbuckled
drivers that they will get a ticket. They are a practical alternative
for high visibility enforcement in jurisdictions that don’t allow
safety belt checkpoints. The concept is as follows:
- Pick a stretch of
roadway that has a history of crashes involving unbuckled operators.
- Locate
a controlled intersection that has a stop sign or traffic light.
- Station officers, deputies, and troopers at
the intersection, and place roadside signage upstream, proclaiming “Enforcement
Zone Ahead, Click It or Ticket.”
- Watch carefully as cars pull
up to the intersection, and ticket the unbuckled.
Marion County,
Indiana, began pilot-testing Enforcement Zones in 2000. In 2002,
they went statewide, with 250 participating law enforcement agencies.
Indiana’s belt use increased 5 percent over the 2001
level. Enforcement Zones will work anywhere, but Indiana
officials strongly recommend that strict guidelines be followed
to ensure continuing, maximum effectiveness. These guidelines
include:
- Conducting the zones at high-crash and/or low-belt-usage
locations.
- Implementing a strong public information and
education program.
- Inviting the media to visit the zones to fully
inform them why, when, and where the zones are being conducted.
- Stopping
only those vehicles in which an officer observes a violation.
Buckle
Up New York (BUNY)
Another successful BUNY enforcement wave took
place during the Click It or Ticket mobilization
in May. All of New York’s 572 enforcement
agencies committed to participate in the campaign; of the 367 reporting
agencies, 275 received funding from the Governor’s Traffic Safety
Committee and 92 agencies participated and reported even though they
received no special funding.
Informal surveys conducted by the New York
State Police showed an increase in belt use
from a pre-mobilization rate of 85.9 percent
to 91.4 percent—the
highest use rate ever recorded by the State Police. The State’s
statewide observation survey (fully compliant with NHTSA’s Uniform
National Criteria and the Section 157 program) showed belt use increasing
from 80 percent to 84.6 percent. In all, 763 checkpoints were conducted
statewide, with 3,049 officers working 3,963 hours to support this effort,
and 56,554 occupant restraint summonses were issued.
The BUNY campaign used a variety of public
information program activities to raise the
level of awareness among New Yorkers and increase
the perception among motorists that unbelted
drivers will be ticketed. These included the
influential New York State Broadcasters Association’s non-commercial
sustaining advertisement (NCSA) program and a limited paid media buy
directed at Hispanic cable stations. Another important part of the State’s
public information outreach was an aggressive earned media campaign that
included a press release from the Governor and a tri-State kickoff event
at the Empire State Building.
As in the past, in 2002, BUNY promoted
safety belt messages to all communities.
The campaign was featured at the African
American Family Day celebration in the
capital region, the Hispanic legislators’ Somos
El Futuro conference, and at the many bilingual child safety seat clinics in the
State.
Click It or Ticket a Huge Success in West
Virginia
Surveys measuring safety belt use before
and after the May 2002 Click It or Ticket campaign showed an incredible increase in
compliance in West Virginia. Before the effort,
52.3 percent of West Virginians wore safety
belts. Immediately after the enforcement
blitz period, which combined enforcement
with public education and paid advertising,
71.6 percent of vehicle occupants were buckling
up.
An important key to the success of West Virginia’s campaign was
the efforts of highway safety office staff to gain support and commitment
from the law enforcement community. To this end, staff traveled around
the State and held seven regional meetings. Their efforts paid off. Statewide
during the two-week enforcement period, officers wrote more safety belt
and child passenger safety citations than the combined total for the
previous two years.
While the role of law enforcement was critical
to the success of the campaign, the media component
was also vital. People did not necessarily have
to receive a ticket to be convinced to buckle
up. They saw and heard the Click It or Ticket message so often
that they perceived they would be ticketed. West Virginia aired the television
spot during prime time hours on network and cable channels
over 8,000 times during the two-week period. For radio,
four different enforcement spots were played over 25,000 times
during the blitz.
Three Consecutive Years of Click It or Ticket in Florida
Florida developed and implemented a comprehensive action plan for
boosting safety belt use since 2000. This plan
focuses on the “full implementation
model” of Click
It or Ticket, incorporating the components of leadership,
political permission, highly visible enforcement, paid and earned media,
diversity outreach, and evaluation. Florida also recruited a Statewide
Law Enforcement Coordinator and seven Law Enforcement Liaisons to enroll
law enforcement agencies in waves of enforcement across the State.
The Coordinator and the Liaisons also provide
leadership to State and local agencies, the media,
and private sector groups. A network of 45 Community
Traffic Safety Teams, covering over 85 percent
of the State’s
population, was recruited to assist in advancing the Click
It or Ticket campaign.
As a secondary law State, Florida could
not conduct checkpoints. Nevertheless,
troopers, deputies and officers remarkably
wrote more than 37,000 safety belt citations
during the 2002 Memorial Day Click It or
Ticket campaign and safety belt use increased
to an all-time high of 75 percent.
Evaluation of the Click It or Ticket Model
Based on the success of the Click It or Ticket campaign in Region
IV during May 2001, a number of States, as highlighted
above, went beyond the typical ABC mobilization and implemented
a full Click It or Ticket mobilization model that included
an intense paid media campaign. NHTSA evaluated the effectiveness of this model
making comparisons between “Full
Implementation” States, “Other Implementation” States
and “Comparison” States [see
Table 3]. These groups were
defined as follows.
Full Implementation
States – Ten States: Alabama,
Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi,
Nevada, Texas1, Vermont, Washington,
and West Virginia conducted full implementation
campaigns. Each conducted a statewide
program employing all elements of the Click
It or Ticket model including:
- Defined
periods of earned media, paid media,
and intensive enforcement;
- Paid
advertisement placement using Click It or Ticket or similar
direct enforcement messages;
- Program evaluations involving before-, during-,
and after-observation surveys of belt use and surveys of public perceptions
of the program.
Among the full implementation
States, the amount spent on paid
advertising ranged from a low
of $200,000 in Vermont to a high
of $2,112,921 in Florida.
Other Implementation States – Four States: Colorado, Michigan,
Ohio, and Rhode Island conducted campaigns similar to the full implementation
States; however, they had limited paid advertisement placement. Among
these States, the amount spent on paid advertising ranged from a low
of $27,000 in Rhode Island to a high of $650,000 in Michigan.
Comparison
States – Four States: Iowa, New York, Oregon, and western
Massachusetts. These States conducted campaigns similar to the full implementation
States; however, they did not purchase any advertising.
Safety belt use increased
8.6 percentage points averaged
across the 10 Click It or
Ticket model States. There
was a 2.7 point increase
averaged across the limited
paid media States and only
0.5 point safety belt use
increase averaged across
the States not using direct
advertisement placement.
Among the Full Implementation
group, increases in safety
belt use occurred in all
10 States (both primary and
secondary with either high-
or low-safety-belt-use baselines). Safety
belt use increased in three of the four States that had limited
paid media and in two of the four comparison States.
Table 3 — Observed Changes in the Safety Belt Use Rate by State
(N=312,172) |
(N=324,895) |
|
70.3 |
78.7 |
+8.4 |
66.5 |
75.1 |
+8.6 |
70.6 |
74.3 |
+3.7 |
69.2 |
72.2 |
+3.0 |
53.8 |
61.5 |
+7.7 |
70.6 |
76.4 |
+5.8 |
80.5 |
86.4 |
+5.9 |
66.2 |
84.9 |
+18.7 |
80.8 |
89.5 |
+8.7 |
56.5 |
71.6 |
+15.1 |
68.5 |
77.1 |
+8.6 |
(N=185,173) |
(N=188,857) |
|
72.1 |
73.2 |
+1.1 |
82.3 |
80.0 |
-2.3 |
64.2 |
70.3 |
+6.1 |
62.6 |
68.6 |
+6.0 |
70.3 |
73.0 |
+2.7 |
(N=118,761) |
(N=122,247) |
|
81.4 |
83.0 |
+1.6 |
78.3 |
82.8 |
+4.5 |
88.5 |
87.8 |
-0.7 |
60.6 |
57.2 |
-3.4 |
Among the 18 study States, approximately 250,000 safety belt citations
were reported during the enforcement period. As Table 4 indicates, the
rate of ticketing per resident ranged widely in all three study groups:
9 to 40 per 10,000 residents in Full-implementation States; 5 to 19 in
Other-implementation States; and 10 to 36 in Comparison States. Generally,
the States with primary safety belt use laws (AL, IA IN, MI, NY, OR,
TX) issued tickets at a greater per-resident rate. Highest ticketing
rates included Alabama (31), Indiana (40), and Texas (40) among the Full-implementation
States; in Comparison States, New York (36) had the highest ticketing
rate.
Table 4 — sTEP Wave Enforcement Summary
|
|
13,664 |
31 |
37,063 |
23 |
22,073 |
18 |
24,697 |
40 |
2,486 |
9 |
3,570 |
17 |
27,260 |
40 |
1,304 |
21 |
5,505 |
9 |
3,104 |
17 |
|
|
3,026 |
7 |
5,463 |
5 |
21,790 |
19 |
RI |
1,301 |
12 |
|
|
3,033 |
10 |
9,034 |
36 |
5,745 |
17 |
818 |
24 |
1 The Texas program centered around the
10 largest cities in the state. An estimated 80 percent of the state’s
population was covered.
|