Colorado’s annual seat belt crackdown returns. The numbers suggest it isn’t working.
By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice
"Their lives might have been saved if they invested three seconds in safety and buckled up."
Col. Matthew C. Packard, chief of the Colorado State Patrol, said that Monday about the 191 Coloradans who died in crashes last year without a seat belt. CDOT's release marked the launch of the state's annual Click It or Ticket enforcement campaign with five years of fatality data. The numbers have not moved.
Since 2021, the unbuckled share of passenger vehicle deaths in Colorado has held between 48 percent and 52 percent each year. Through May 18 of this year, 40 unbuckled drivers and passengers have died on Colorado roads, 51 percent of all passenger vehicle fatalities. Across the full five-year period, 1,052 of 2,087 passenger v...
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