Click It or Ticket Campaign

This past week or so, the national “Click it or Ticket” campaign began, with a slurry of radio and TV ads warning drivers about the seriousness of not wearing a seatbelt. Of course, when you can’t scare a person into being safer, you can always fine them into submission. That’s what the ads claim will happen anyways, showing a guy driving down the road with at least twenty citations floating around his vehicle, chasing him down. Money is a good motivator, but I have trouble actually believing that the method works, taking my own story for example.





I grew up wearing a seatbelt. It was never optional, even though my friends didn’t have to and so I was always the lame one among my friends, following my mom’s rules and buckling up. As I got older and we did more work around the farm, I remember how cumbersome the belt was and stopping putting it on because I was just taking it off again. I figured the half mile I was in the car wouldn’t hurt me, etc. This carried over into college where everything was just the next mile away or I was changing clothes while driving, or trying to reach something in the backseat and then just forgetting to put it on. That was, at least, until my car was blacklisted on campus.

My car was one of two on campus with Ohio Beef license plates and it was easy to tell the two of us apart. Between my junior and senior years at school the local police started breaking down on a lot of driving violations that were prevalent, most notably DUIs and lack of seatbelt buckling. We heard about it nearly every radio commercial break and you knew when you drove past police officers that they were scanning you to see if your belt was unbuckled. Since I worked at the dairy farm on a research project and pretty much hopping in and out of the car all the time to run to the lab and back, I never wore my seatbelt. It finally caught up with me one week in particular, in the summer of 2009.

Sitting at the stoplight without my belt buckled, waiting for the green which would take me back to the dairy, I noticed a motorcycle cop on the opposite side, staring at me through his window. With a penetrating gaze, he quickly made me aware that I wasn’t wearing my belt (habit) and I reached for it to smoothly pull it down and buckle without drawing much attention. He gave me the sunglasses nod, adjusting them on his face while looking straight at me and giving that one bob of the head which said, “Yeah, I saw that. Don’t do it again, buddy.”

A couple of days later I was driving through the same intersection. Headed the opposite direction, again without seatbelt, I saw my new friend propped against the light control box, scanning people for radar speeds. I was speeding and slowed down instinctively to avoid the ticket. He saw me, but wasn’t thinking about my speed at all. He dropped the gun slightly and looked hard at me. I couldn’t put the belt on in time so just conveniently pulled into the parking lot and went inside to the lab. But know I knew it, he knew me and probably wasn’t going to forget it soon.

That’s where time three comes into play. Later that same week, my boss wanted a library book borrowed, copied and returned (thankfully he did the translation from German himself). Not having borrowed a book from the library ever, I set off with my friend to visit the library. Distinctly remembering I was being watched for, I was careful to not get a buckling ticket on the way to the library. We parked and walked in, only to find out that you need your student ID to borrow a book from the library. I asked the librarian if we could just do a drive-by, me dropping off my friend to use my ID to borrow the book. Drive-bys aren’t a term taken lightly at the library judging by the look I got at the counter, but she said that was fine and so we hurried to the car to go around the circle before the librarian forgot.

Hurrying leads to forgetfulness, one of the sources of the proverbial haste waste, which is why I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt when I whipped around the corner going 35 in a 25 zone. The first cop tagged me but let me go as I slowed down. But the second guy had been watching for me all week and he’d finally gotten his kill. I didn’t even bother with typical evasion maneuvers, turning left at the light and pulling over before he’d barely even got his lights on. I knew I was caught and there was no way out of this. My passenger hastily swung her belt on as he walked up in those shiny black boots, but I didn’t even bother.

Rolling down my window, information in hand, I was hoping for only one ticket rather than one for speeding and one for the belt. He asked me, “Sir, do you know why I pulled you over?”. Of course I knew but there was no way I gonna make it that easy. I casually made mention that I might’ve been speeding but he got straight to the point.

Officer: “Do you know it’s the law to wear your seatbelt?”

Me: “Yes, I’d heard that.”

Officer (looking at passenger): “What, did your passenger tell you that?”

Me: “No, sir, something like 50 fricking radio ads.”

Pause at which point he probably wasn’t sure how to process what I’d just told him. I thought best to spill.

Me: “I’m sorry, I’m just not in the habit of wearing a seatbelt ( <-- just told him this was a normal occurrence which he already knew anyways) because where I come from we don’t have to wear them (out of all this truth comes the lie of them all, I obviously had a US driver’s license). I work on a farm and am always just hopping in and out (true, and we smelled like it). We were just up at the library and I didn’t know you had to have your ID to check out a book so we were just going around the circle to pick up that book really quick and I wasn’t thinking about it ( <-- is this guy stupid?).” He walks off for a while back to the motorcycle to think things over and starts writing on a pad of paper. I was screwed.

Officer: “I’m just going to let you go with a warning today, but buckle up or next time it’s gonna be a $65 reminder." Wait a second, did he really just let me go?

When they made wearing seatbelts the law, I made it a mission of mine to defy that law as much as possible when driving around short distances in town, hating any time that laws are used to enforce common sense (Yes, I know that reasoning sounds as stupid as it is, but defiance is often about the ideal, not always straight logic) and counting on my own ability to drive and pay attention to take care of me and too lazy to buckle for the short trips. I still used the belt when I was driving long distance, but not when I was just hopping in and out. Getting that second chance to not get a ticket and knowing my car was blacklisted is what got me started wearing it again. My small moment of defiance was overtaken once again by common sense which told me I might want the belt sometime.

Buckle up, folks. More often than not it will save your life.