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UPD secures grant to enforce traffic safety and seat belt use
By Katie Anderson
On April 10, 2013
Students may want to make sure they buckle up during the month of April, as the University
Police Department participates in the national campaign, "Click It, or Ticket."
University Police officers will be surveying students driving around campus, checking to
see if they, or any passengers, are wearing seat belts. After the surveys are completed, an
enforcement phase will follow April 15-25.
"We'll do 50 to 100 cars, and we'll count how many of the people are wearing seatbelts," Chief
of University Police Peter Carey said. "We'll look at the drivers and front-seat passengers and
we'll come up with a compliance percentage for seat belt usage before we do the enforcement.
Then we do another survey after we do the enforcement to see if there's any change, and it's
also used to compare our seat belt compliance across the state."
Carey said that Buffalo State's seat belt compliance is usually around the national average,
between 70 and 80 percent.
Although the national campaign is not scheduled to take place until May, Carey said UPD is
allowed to move up the dates for so that school will still be in session when the surveys and
enforcement are conducted.
Carey said that the goal of the campaign is to spread awareness and prevent death and injury
caused by the lack of seat belt usage.
"The injuries and death that result from a lack of wearing them is the main focus for our
department as well as the Governor's Traffic Safety Committee and the National Highway
Traffic Safety," he said.
The Governor's Traffic Safety Committee awarded UPD with two different grants for the third
year in a row, providing funds for the campus to have an officer focusing mainly on traffic
enforcement.
The first grant is called Selective Traffic Enforcement Program which provides for UPD to
schedule an officer to patrol campus and pay close attention to aggressive and distracted
driving including speeding, running red lights or stop signs, unsafe lane changes, cell phone
use or texting and driving while intoxicated, Carey said. Officers will be scheduled in four-hour
increments, including some overnights, which will be fully funded by the grant.
"We're trying to raise awareness and safety, and unfortunately, some people will keep doing it
until they get the ticket," Carey said. "We're hoping that the ticket will be a behavior modifier,
that they will then stop driving aggressively and start wearing their seat belts."
The second grant, Buckle Up New York, provides UPD with funds to focus more attention on
child restraint and seat belt enforcement, including their participation in the national campaign.
"We're asking people to drive safely, wear their seat belts and make their passengers wear
them," Carey said. "Everybody is safer wearing a seat belt."
Katie Anderson can be reached by email at anderson.record@live.com or on twitter
@katetheskate91.
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