Monday, 23 February 2009 00:00

Officers from the Sussex Police Road Policing Unit took part in a Europe-wide operation last week (16th - 22nd February) to enforce seatbelt legislation.

Some 333 fixed penalty notices were issued to adults across the county for failing to wear a seatbelt during the seven day initiative; one ticket was also issued for a child being unrestrained.

Sgt Richard Hornsey, of the Operations Department, said: "It is encouraging to see that there has been an improvement in the number of children being secured correctly. During this operation in 2007, there were 14 tickets issued for children found to be unsecured out of 152 tickets issued, this fell to three out of 190 tickets in 2008 and one out of 334 this year.

"It is still disappointing, however, that so many adults choose not wear their seatbelts and officers from the Road Policing Unit and their colleagues across the Force will continue to take positive action when an offence is witnessed.

"It has been law to wear a seatbelt in the front of a car since January 1983 so anyone who has taken and passed their driving test in the last 26 years would have to have worn a seatbelt to do so. Therefore being stopped for not wearing a seatbelt cannot come as a surprise and there really can be no excuses. It has also been law for rear seat passengers to wear their seatbelts since 1991."

He added: "Wearing a seatbelt correctly is such a simple way of improving your chances of avoiding serious injury or death if you are unfortunate enough to be involved in a road traffic collision."