"Buckle Up In Your Truck"

Enforcement Blitz Focuses on Pickup Truck Drivers and Passengers

April 28, 2006

NASHVILLE, Tenn., --- The Tennessee Department of Transportation Governor's Highway Safety Office (GHSO), and the Tennessee Highway Patrol, along with local law enforcement and safety advocates, came together today to encourage Tennessee pickup truck drivers and their passengers to protect themselves from fatal crashes.

The event, which was held at the Tennessee Department of Safety Training Center in Nashville , centered on the fact that pickup truck drivers and their passengers are among those Americans least likely to regularly wear their safety belts according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

That is why the Governor's Highway Safety Office announced today that it is joining with NHTSA, and highway safety and law enforcement leaders across an eight-state region to launch a high visibility enforcement initiative called "Buckle Up In Your Truck." The goal of the program is to convince pickup truck drivers and their passengers to always buckle up.

Law enforcement and highway safety partners from Alabama , Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee are joining to launch "Buckle Up In Your Truck." It will include a variety of enforcement and outreach activities including television and radio promotion in targeted markets where pickup truck fatalities have been most prevalent.

The multi-state "Buckle Up In Your Truck" initiative immediately precedes the intensive Click It or Ticket national safety belt enforcement mobilization set for May 22 to June 4, 2006.

"Our goal is to save more lives by reminding pickup truck occupants to always wear their safety belts because that is the single best defense against ejection in a crash," said Kendell Poole, Director, Governor's Highway Safety Office. "In fact, that simple step of always buckling up will increase your odds of survival by 70 to 80 percent if you have a rollover crash."

According to NHTSA, there were 1,677 fatalities from pickup truck crashes in the Southeastern U.S. in 2003. Seventy-one percent of the pickup truck occupants involved in those crashes were not buckled up at the time of the crash. Roughly 37 percent of these fatalities were involved in a rollover crash.

"While rollovers can happen in any kind of passenger vehicle, pickup trucks are twice as likely to roll over as cars, because they have a higher center of gravity," said TDOT Commissioner Gerald Nicely. "But even more alarming is that the ejection rate for occupants of light trucks in a crash is also nearly double the rate of those in cars and much of that comes from folks not wearing their safety belts."

The eight states participating in the "Buckle Up In Your Truck" campaign contain approximately 20 percent of the nation's population but represent approximately 26 percent of the nation's traffic fatalities.

Only 21 percent of Americans live in rural areas, yet in 2002, rural traffic crashes accounted for 70 percent of the total traffic fatalities on the nation's highways. Research shows that young men (ages 16-34) driving or riding in pickup trucks, particularly those observed in rural areas, are among those least likely to regularly wear their safety belts.

For driving tips on how to avoid rollover crashes and injuries, please visit the web at www.safercar.gov. For more information about the value of always wearing your safety belt, please visit www.buckleupamerica.org.