Safety Source
Seat Belts Save Lives
Safety Training Manager Samuel Wilfert reviews the importance of wearing seat belts.
Seat belts have been proven to be one of the best ways to save your life in a crash. Yet many still do not buckle up. Worse still, not wearing a seat belt is a habit that can be passed on to impressionable youth who, in turn, think it is safe to not buckle up. Each year, Click It or Ticket campaigns focus on safety education, strong laws, and law enforcement support to save lives A failure to use a seat belt violation carries a point weighting of seven tied to the “Unsafe Driving” basic score in the Compliance, Safety, Accountability Safety Measurement System, or CSA SMS. No matter what type of vehicle you drive, one of the safest choices drivers and passengers can make is to buckle up.
Click It or Ticket is a national high-visibility enforcement campaign centered on the consequences of not wearing a seat belt. Throughout the year, law enforcement agencies across the country increase patrols, focusing on issuing citations to drivers not wearing a seat belt.
91.9%
SEAT BELT USE RATE IN 2023
8%
PERCENTAGE POINT INCREASE IN SEAT BELT USAGE BETWEEN 2007 AND 2021
14,955
NUMBER OF LIVES SAVED BY SEAT BELTS IN CRASHES
We also see dockworkers failing to properly wear their seat belt when operating a forklift by circumventing the process as pictured in the image to the right. A forklift falling off the dock accounts for 25% of all forklift accidents. A seatbelt properly secured across your hips will prevent you from exiting a forklift cage. This reduces the chance that you will sustain a crushing head or body injury. This is called a “mousetrapping injury” one recognized by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) as a serious hazard. In the event of an OSHA inspection, a dockworker failing to wear a seatbelt properly or not at all could result in a citation to Saia.
