Glendale Enforcing Seat Belt Law--Deaths, Injuries Down

Traffic fatalities and injuries in Glendale fell 12% in January compared to the same month last year, a decrease that police attribute to the city’s strict enforcement of the state’s mandatory seat belt law.

The Glendale Police Department was the only law enforcement agency in Los Angeles County to begin issuing citations to motorists on Jan. 1, the day the new law went into effect, Lt. Mike Post said Monday.

“I draw a correlation between increased enforcement, which has brought about a dramatic increase in compliance, with the reductions in injuries,” he said.

Few figures were available from other municipalities in Southern California and a spokeswoman for the California Highway Patrol said it appeared that Glendale was one of only a few jurisdictions strictly enforcing the law. The CHP and most other police agencies have agreed on a 60-day grace period, giving motorists until March 1 to become aware that buckling up is now the law in California.

“The purpose of a grace period is to allow the public time to understand a technically complicated new law,” Post said. “But mandatory seat belt use is something they should have been doing as a matter of common sense.”

Although the total number of traffic accidents in Glendale increased this January to 251, compared to 223 in January last year, there were no fatalities, police said. Last year, two people died in traffic accidents in the city.

The number of those injured in traffic accidents fell from 63 in January, 1985, to 57 last month, police said.

Glendale police officers issued a total of 370 tickets for seat belt violations during January, Post said. Officers gave the tickets only after stopping drivers for other “flagrant” violations and saw that their seat belts were not fastened, he said.

Beginning Jan. 1, Glendale officers found that only about 20% of the motorists they stopped were wearing seat belts. By the end of the month, about 64% were found to be wearing seat belts, Post said.

Grace Period Agreement

CHP spokeswoman Jill Angel said the CHP, Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had all agreed to the 60-day grace period.

She said CHP officers have only issued about 200 seat belt citations throughout the state. Those were to drivers pulled over for other traffic violations, who were warned that they should be wearing their seat belts and then flatly refused to buckle up.

In Orange County, Irvine police began issuing citations in January. Several hundred citations have been issued, Sgt. Jim Broomfield said, but there are no figures available for accidents and fatalities since enforcement began.

For the most part, other Orange County jurisdictions, including the CHP stations there, are waiting until March 1 to begin a full crackdown. In San Diego, both the city police and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department are honoring the grace period. Neither agency had figures available on how many citations they issued in flagrant cases in January, nor the number of traffic accidents that occurred last month.