LINCOLN — Holiday revelry hasn’t even geared up for 2009, and already more people have died from motor-vehicle crashes than in all of 2008, state officials say.

Sixty-seven people have died on Rhode Island roads and highways this year, 57 of them in vehicles and 10 on foot.

That’s two more than in 2008, when 53 people in vehicles and 12 pedestrians died in accidents.

At the rest area and visitor center on Route 295 north on Friday, the state’s top officials in law enforcement, highways and public safety gathered to promote safe driving. Slow down, buckle up, pay attention (this includes refraining from texting, for which a separate news conference is planned), and don’t get behind the wheel while impaired.

Assistant Attorney General Jay Sullivan, the state’s traffic-safety resource prosecutor, said 20 of those who died on the highways this year were younger than 30. Of those, three were killed in motorcycle crashes, and two of those three were not wearing helmets. Of the 17 people under 30 who died in vehicle crashes, none used a seat belt.

Of the 37 people older than 30 who died in vehicles, 29 were not wearing seat belts.

Sullivan and other officials said Rhode Island might be ripe for a primary seat-belt law for all drivers. Now, only drivers younger than 18 can be pulled over for failing to wear a seat belt. A primary seatbelt law would give police the right to pull over any driver solely for failing to wear a seat belt.

People using seat belts have a 50-percent greater chance of surviving a crash, said Janis E. Loiselle, administrator for the state Department of Transportation’s office of highway safety.

“There is no casino in the country that will give you those odds,” said Richard Sullivan, former Providence police chief who is now the state Law Enforcement Highway Safety training coordinator

Generally, primary seat-belt laws will increase use by 11 percent, Loiselle said. Based on 2007 numbers in for Rhode Island, she said, “we would have saved four lives” not only in 2008, but also in 2009 and every year after.

The number of people saved from serious injury is a far greater number, she said.

“The two worst calls that you can ever get in your life is that someone dear to you has died in a crash that was survivable had they had their seat belt on,” she said, “and that it was the person in your family who caused the crash” because of impaired driving.

Those are the ones that hurt the most, she said.

Also at the news conference were state police Col. Brendan P. Doherty; Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch; Phillip Kydd, RIDOT’s assistant director for administration; and Pawtucket Police Chief George Kelley III, president of the Rhode Island Police Chiefs’ Association.

“There’s only one thing we have in mind when we come to a press conference like this,” said Sullivan, “and that’s saving lives.”

With reports from W. Zachary MalinowskiR.I. traffic fatalities

More people have died so far in 2009 than in all of 2008.

dnaylor@projo.com