I believe most adults would never intentionally put themselves at risk, however, the drivers n this survey, admit that they don t always buckle up children, and that they knowingly put children at risk and do so repeatedly. This is unconscionable. Drivers who fail to ensure that their passengers, especially children and babies in their care, are buckled up are needlessly endangering them and violating the law. Law enforcement officials across the United States should take the necessary steps to aggressively enforce the law with these willful offenders. All Americans should be proud of the men and women in law enforcement who are going to put kids first this Thanksgiving week and enforcing child restraint laws across our great nation.
Traffic crashes are the leading cause of death and injury for American children of all races.
Sixty percent of the children killed in crashes are completely unbuckled. Nearly half of these unbuckled children would be alive today if drivers had obeyed the law and buckled them up. The hallways of the NTSB are lined with photos of some of the nations most serious and tragic transportation disasters and each one has left families to bear the tremendous pain of losing a loved one too soon to a preventable accident. But we will never have enough wall space at the NTSB for the thousands and thousands of vehicle crashes that have taken the lives of more that 81,000 children under the age of 20 in this decade. Think of it.