PROVIDENCE—If you’re one of the more than 200,000 Rhode Islanders who still aren’t buckling up on the roads, now might be a good time to start.

A new proposal in the governor’s budget would change the state’s seat-belt law, allowing the police to pull over motorists exclusively for failing to wear the restraints.

Currently, the police may issue citations only if they’ve stopped a driver for another reason.

Advocates including the state police and the Department of Transportation say the proposed “primary” seat-belt law could increase usage to about 84 percent. Usage at that level, DOT officials estimate, could annually prevent an average of four deaths and 96 serious injuries.

The state police rattle off grisly anecdotes about what happens to unbelted drivers and passengers in a crash.

During a snowstorm on March 1, David Hauser, of West Warwick, was driving north on Route 295 in Smithfield when his car hit a guardrail and then struck another vehicle. Hauser was thrown from his car, then hit by the other one.

“We determined that he was not wearing a seat belt,” said Lt. Col. Steven G. O’Donnell. “It’s very, very difficult to get ejected from a vehicle if you have a seat belt on. You can’t say for sure that it wouldn’t have happened, but if he had had a belt on and stayed in the car, he would have had a lot better chance of living.”

It is a sobering lesson.

Currently 27 states, among them Connecticut and New York, have primary seat-belt laws; 22 others, including Massachusetts and Rhode Island, have what are known as secondary laws. New Hampshire remains the only state that does not require adults to wear seat belts, though legislators there are now considering doing so.

Were Rhode Island to change its law, it would qualify for $3.7 million in federal money available to states that impose primary-offense seat-belt laws before this summer. An additional $850,000 may then be available in leftover money to be divided among participating states once the enrollment ends.

About $1 million of the initial $3.7 million would be earmarked for public awareness initiatives, including the “Click It or Ticket” program that encourages Rhode Island drivers to buckle up. The remaining $2.7 million would go to upgrades intended to make roads safer. Widening of lanes, installation of rumble strips and improvements for pedestrian and bicycle safety are a few of the possibilities, said Janis Loiselle, highway safety administrator for the state DOT.

The availability of such a large sum of money –– and the fact that it will soon expire –– created “a sense of urgency to get this passed as part of the budget,” said Governor Carcieri’s spokeswoman, Amy Kempe. The plan also calls for the state to decrease fines from $85 a ticket to $30, for each person in the car not buckled up.

The primary seat-belt proposal is not new on Smith Hill. Several times in recent years it has worked its way through the legislature only to fall apart amid assertions by civil rights groups that such a law could lead to increased racial profiling. One group, the Rhode Island Civil Rights Roundtable, called it “a recipe for expanded racial profiling.”

The latest proposal has prompted similar objections.

“We don’t want to give any more authority for police officers to pull over vehicles, because we now know that blacks and Hispanics are pulled over [in Rhode Island] at a rate two times more frequently than white drivers,” said Amy Vitale, program coordinator for the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union.

A 2006 study by researchers at Northeastern University found a two-to-one disparity in Rhode Island traffic stops.

Community activist and longtime racial-profiling critic Onna Moniz-John agreed with Vitale’s assessment and questioned how the police would even tell whether a person in a fast-moving car is wearing a seat belt.

“It’s not that I’m against safety,” Moniz-John said in a telephone interview yesterday. “I’m on the road as a passenger right now and I have my seat belt on. I have three kids in the back seat and they have their belts on. The issue is that we have a major problem with racial profiling that won’t go away and this [would be] just one more excuse to pull people over unnecessarily, especially minorities.”

O’Donnell, of the state police, said the agency is aware of the criticism, but he stressed the safety implications.

In 2008, the state police issued 2,524 tickets for seat-belt violations. They estimate that number will jump substantially if a primary law is passed.

But the state budget office and the DOT say any jump would be temporary. Eventually, they say, the law should act as a deterrent.

It is unclear however what the immediate budget impact will be. Though the proposal was included as part of the budget plan crafted as the state tries to close its massive deficits, both the budget office and the DOT say they are unable to determine what the new law –– including the reduced fee scale –– would do to ticket revenues. Neither could provide estimates or supporting numbers.

The DOT’s Loiselle predicts the new law could save Rhode Islanders upward of $22 million in “medical expenses, lost revenue [and] property damage” that serious accidents cause each year. She did not cite a source for those statistics.

Kempe said the fiscal impact is secondary to safety. “If you can save even one life by making this a deterrent, you can’t put a value on that,” she said. “You can’t put a value on one life.”

cneedham@projo.com