Buckle Up or Else, Say Ojai Officers

Of course, Miriam Mullens, 28, knows it’s against the law, not to mention dangerous, to drive without a seat belt.

As a teacher’s aide, she even tells students to buckle up. But that didn’t stop her from jumping into her blue Nissan Pulsar on Monday and zipping out of her school’s parking lot in Ojai unbuckled.

“I know better,” Mullens said as Senior Deputy Scott Peterson filled out her ticket. “I know, driving with a seat belt, it’s a lot safer.”

Mullens and dozens of others were cited this week in Ojai for failing to buckle up themselves or buckle in a child.

Ojai deputies are taking part in a nationwide campaign known as Operation ABC Mobilization: America Buckles up Children. Spearheaded by the Air Bag and Seatbelt Safety Campaign, a consumer safety group, the weeklong program is designed to promote the use of seat belts and child safety seats. More than 4,000 law enforcement agencies are participating.

Peterson, Ojai’s traffic coordinator, created a task force dedicated to issuing tickets for seat belt violations from Nov. 23-29.

No one is getting off with a warning this week, Peterson said. There is a zero-tolerance policy in effect. The violations run $25 for an unbuckled adult, nearly $300 for an improperly restrained child.

“It’s one of our top violations,” Peterson said. “Why people won’t just do it amazes me.” By Monday afternoon, he had already heard all the excuses.

“It’s uncomfortable. It chafes my neck. If I get in a wreck, I don’t want to be pinned in my car,” said Peterson, mimicking the many drivers he has pulled over. “But all the statistics show seat belts save lives.”

Peterson said the focus is on parents riding with unrestrained toddlers. In California, children must ride in safety seats until they are 4 and weigh more than 40 pounds.

The goal is to prevent tragedies like the death of 4-month-old Jesus Sanchez in 1996. Sanchez was seated on his mother’s lap when the car he was riding in slammed into a pickup truck on Saviers Road in Oxnard. Sanchez was crushed to death.

And just a few months earlier a 3-year-old Oxnard girl, unrestrained, was thrown from an older-model Dodge Ramcharger and crushed to death when the vehicle rolled over her.

In both cases, authorities say, the children would have survived if they had been strapped into a car seat.

Such tragedies could easily have been repeated for a family cited Monday morning, Peterson said. The mother held her small baby in her lap. Their child safety seat was locked up in the trunk.

Not everyone thought the program was a good idea. Residents like Steve Brooks of Camarillo, caught unbuckled in his black Dodge pickup, questioned why deputies wasted time issuing tickets for such a violation.

“I don’t think people should be forced to wear one,” said Brooks, who complained that the belts were too uncomfortable. “If people don’t want to, it’s up to them. It’s their car, their body, it should be freedom of choice.”

“Unfortunately, that’s the kind of problem we face,” Peterson said later. “I hate to be the one that’s in the horrible position of telling a family their son, daughter or husband died in an accident and then come to find out they could have survived if they had just worn a seat belt. I just wish people would wear the doggone things.”

It’s particularly important to buckle up this time of year--when more people are on the roads traveling to see family for the holidays or bustling back and forth between malls for Christmas shopping, authorities said. And with all the holiday parties, more drunk drivers will also be on the road.

“This is the week people reflect on what they have to be thankful for,” said Sgt. Chuck Buttell, spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department. “So it’s a good time to emphasize that if you want to continue to be thankful for the health and well-being of your family, buckle up. We don’t want anyone to look back and say, ‘If I had only taken that extra few seconds.’ ”