Police Crack Down On People Who Don’t Buckle Up

Colorado Spring Police are cracking down on people who don’t buckle themselves, and their children, up. ” It definitely feels good to ticket someone rolling down the street with their kids bouncing around the back seat. In an accident, that child becomes a missile and goes right through the window, ” said Sgt. Rob Kelley of the Colorado Springs Police Department.

If your child isn’t buckled up, police can just pull you over and give you a ticket. But for police to ticket adults for not being buckled up, things get a little trickier.

“Seat belt violations are a secondary enforcement offense. Basically that means that you have to have something else as your probable cause to make the traffic stop,” said Sgt. Kelley.

That is not a problem, according to one officer. “We can always find a reason to stop somebody. That’s not a problem. Most people violate traffic laws multiple times within a couple of miles,” said Sgt. Kelley.

Not only does not buckling up increase your chance of getting pulled over, it also increases your chances of getting other types of tickets.

“There are a lot of violations that would be considered petty, unimportant, and, by themselves, we probably wouldn’t make a traffic stop,” said Sgt. Kelley.

Seeing a unbuckled seat belt actually raises red flags for officers. “We might have to follow the car a little further before we can make the stop,” said Sgt. Kelley.

The Colorado Springs Police Department says they wrote more than a thousand tickets to people who weren’t buckled up last year and they believe they may have saved just as many lives.