Use Your Seatbelt Every Time

A seatbelt can save your life. It could also save you the cost of a $128.75 fine and two demerit points on your driver's licence.

Police agencies across Nova Scotia are holding a series of checkpoints from Friday, Oct. 7 to Monday, Oct. 10, to remind drivers and passengers to use their seatbelts. The checkpoints are part of a program called Operation Road Safety, organized by the police and Nova Scotia's road safety advisory committee.

"Drivers and passengers, regardless of age, need to be secured with their seatbelt or safety seat no matter how short the trip," said Transportation and Public Works Minister Ron Russell. "We reduce the risk of severe injury or death when we buckle up, whether we're driving in urban or rural areas."

The non-use of seatbelts is a factor in one of every four road fatalities in Nova Scotia. About 89 per cent of Nova Scotians regularly use seatbelts.

Nova Scotia is working toward benchmarks set by Road Safety Vision 2010, a national plan to make Canada's roads the safest in the world.

Road Safety Vision 2010's national targets include:

• Achieve and/or maintain a 95 per cent seatbelt wearing rate by all vehicle occupants and proper use of child restraints by 2010;

• Achieve a 40 per cent reduction in the number of unbelted fatally and seriously injured vehicle occupants by 2010. While annual seatbelt use surveys suggest that nine of 10 Canadians wear seatbelts on a regular basis, almost 40 per cent of occupants killed and 20 percent of those seriously injured had not buckled up.

For more information on these targets see the website at www.tc.gc.ca/roadsafety/tp/tp13736/menu.htm .