Buckle Your Kids Up or Be Prepared to Face a Fine, NAII Says
23 November 1998
Buckle Your Kids Up or Be Prepared to Face a Fine, NAII Says WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 -- "It's a tragic reality that six out of
ten children who die in car crashes every year in this country are not wearing
a seat belt," Robert Dibblee, Senior Vice President of the National
Association of Independent Insurers (NAII), said today. "As we travel to
visit our families and friends this Thanksgiving we are urging everyone to not
only obey the law, but to save lives by making sure their children are
properly buckled up. It only takes three seconds to buckle a belt."
The NAII, with 615 property-casualty insurance company members, supports
this week's efforts by more that 5,000 law enforcement agencies across the
nation as they mount a massive countrywide crackdown on drivers who don't
buckle up kids. Beginning Monday, November 23, and throughout the Thanksgiving
holiday, officers will be out in force in an effort titled "Endorsement for
Enforcement" and will be ticketing those not in compliance with the law that
requires all children be buckled up and properly restrained in a vehicle.
"Since the leading risk to a child's life in this country is being
unrestrained in an automobile, we fully support the Endorsement for
Enforcement high visibility program," Dibblee said. "It seems this is a no-
brainer, but sometimes folks forget the simple things like always placing
children in the back seat of a vehicle and making sure they are properly
buckled up and/or restrained in a child safety seat that has been correctly
installed in the vehicle. And it is extremely important that adults buckle up
because statistics show that when a driver is unbuckled, kids are restrained
only 24 percent of the time. That's a real tragedy."
The statistics are astounding. Today, motor vehicle crashes are the
leading cause of death to children in the U.S. In 1997, motor vehicle crashes
took the lives of 2,087 child passengers ages 0 to 15 and seriously injured
nearly 330,000 more. Every day, an average of seven children ages 14 and
under die and another 908 are injured in motor vehicle-related crashes.
"In an effort to reduce these tragic fatalities and injuries, we applaud
the thousands of law enforcement officials who will be on our roads and
highways in force this holiday week educating the public on the importance of
buckling up themselves and their children and issuing tickets to those found
violating the law," Dibblee stated. "There's no excuse and there will be no
exceptions in this massive enforcement effort."
The NAII is a non-profit trade association representing 615 property-
casualty insurance companies countrywide. Member companies account for
approximately 40 percent of the motor vehicle insurance premiums written in
the U.S.
