CDC Features

CDC Features

Click It or Ticket, May 18–31, 2009

Photo: Safety officer talking to a driver.

This month – and all year – Click It or Ticket, day and night. Buckling up could save your life.

Photo: A man putting a child in a safety seat. Click It or Ticket is a successful nationwide seat belt enforcement campaign. Each year, during the summer season—a busy traveling time for people across the United States—state and local law enforcement team up with highway safety officials to focus on getting drivers and passengers to buckle up, day and night, on every trip.

Reduce Your Risk

By buckling up, you're not only reducing your chances of being stopped and ticketed, you're also increasing your chances of staying alive in a crash. About 2.7 million motor vehicle occupants are injured in crashes in the United States each year. When it comes to staying safe on the road, consider that:

Just by buckling their seat belts, drivers and passengers can reduce their risk of dying in a crash by more than half.
In 2007, 41,059 people lost their lives in motor vehicle crashes, including motor vehicle occupants, pedestrians, and motorcyclists. This is an average of 112 deaths a day, or a death every 13 minutes.
Of those who were killed in crashes, 70% were occupants of passenger vehicles.
An estimated 15,147 lives (of those age 5 and over) were saved in 2007 as a result of seat belt use.

Protect Your Passengers

Protect the Ones You Love

In an effort to raise parents' awareness about the leading causes of child injury in the United States and how they can be prevented, CDC has launched the "Protect the Ones You Love" initiative. Parents can play a life-saving role in protecting children from injuries. Learn more.

If you're on the road with children, make sure they are buckled into appropriate safety seats. The safest place for children of any age to ride is properly restrained in the back seat. Data show that:

In 2007, child-restraints saved the lives of 382 children ages 4 and younger.
Child safety seats reduce the risk of death in car crashes by 71% for infants and 54% for toddlers ages one to four.
For children ages 4 to 7, booster seats reduce injury risk by 59% compared to safety belts alone.
Unbuckled children and adults can be seriously injured or killed by sitting too close to an airbag.
Infants in rear-facing car seats should never ride in the front seat of vehicles with airbags.

CDC's online fact sheets on child passenger safety and road traffic injury prevention can help you learn more.