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Florida May Make Seatbelt Law A Primary Enforcement Tool

By Eddie Farah

The proposal to tighten seat belt requirements has never passed before.

In Florida, not wearing your seat belt will get you an additional fine, if, and only if, you are pulled over for a traffic infraction.

Now a proposal is on the table for Florida to join 25 other states that consider not wearing a seat belt a 'primary' enforcement law- meaning an officer could pull you over and give you a ticket just for not wearing your seat belt.

On the surface, it's tough to argue with. Everyone knows seat belts save lives. Backers of primary enforcement say easily 124 lives will be saved every year and 1,700 serious injuries.

Sen. Tony Hill, D-Jacksonville, and a co-sponsor say, 'We've got too many young people who are dying on our Florida highways because they're not wearing seat belts.'

But there is the expense of extra enforcement and the fear that you can be pulled over at any time with the officer using a seat belt as an excuse. That opens the door to racial profiling and the potential for police abuse.

Hill is not worried about racial profiling because young black men are less likely to wear seat belts.

'Profiling is not what's killing our kids, not wearing their seat belts is what's killing our kids,' he says.

As with many things- follow the money and you will find out why the proposal is gathering favor this time around - namely about $35 million in federal funding at a time the state is scrambling to make every dollar count in this budget shortfall.

This is the last year those funds are available, so the Legislature is making this proposal a high priority.

It's interesting how the carrot-at- the-end-of-a-stick approach to lawmaking seems to be what get's action. Now if we could just use that approach to stop the use of cell phones and texting while driving, we might really slow down the number of traffic deaths in our state. #

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Eddie Farah

Full post as published by Jacksonville Personal Injury Lawyer on March 15, 2009 (boomark / email).