Surveys show that 74 percent of Rhode Islanders use seat belts, less than the national average of 79 percent.

01:00 AM EDT on Friday, May 28, 2004

BY BRUCE LANDIS
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- While the rest of us are planning our Memorial Day weekends and remembering the nation's dead members of the military, police and hospital trauma experts are pleading, practically begging us, to take the moment to fasten our seat belts.

The police also said at a news conference with emergency medical officials at Hasbro Children's Hospital yesterday that they will be handing out $75 tickets to those not using seat belts, because it is that important to buckle up.

Both the police and the doctors said the hardest thing about their jobs is telling family members about a death, and that they are certain they would do less of it if more people would fasten their seat belts and make sure their children are restrained, too.

"We don't want to give tickets," said Rhode Island's state police commander, Col. Steven Pare. But he said it's absolutely clear to him, both from statistical evidence and the daily experience of police officers, that people who buckle up are injured and killed less often in accidents than those who don't wear seat belts.

Hospital officials said the same thing.

Dr. Michael J. Mello, director of the Injury Prevention Center at Rhode Island Hospital, said that he has seen accident victims treated every day for over 15 years. Those who were in seat belts, or car seats, "are less injured and fare better that those who were not."

Surveys, he said, show that 74 percent of Rhode Islanders use seat belts, less than the national average of 79 percent. Pare said that traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for those between 16 and 38 years old.

About 15,000 people are treated for car crash injuries at Rhode Island Hospital every year, the officials said, and almost twice as many unbuckled drivers as buckled drivers are admitted to the intensive care unit.

Because seat belts could save so many lives, Pare said, the state's police chiefs have agreed to practice "zero tolerance" for drivers and passengers not wearing them.

"You will not be given a warning, you will be ticketed, at $75," Pare said. Each unrestrained passenger will cost another $75 ticket, he said.

"We don't want to go to crashes and lift people off the pavement" dead, Pare said, because they weren't buckled into their vehicles and were ejected during collisions.

Eric Moroney, who spoke at the news conference, described how he was driving home on Chalkstone Avenue, in Providence, at about 2 a.m. one night in October 2001, when he was hit head-on by a drunken driver, who the police estimated was traveling about 75 mph. Moroney was going about 25 mph, and Pare said that meant "a total impact of 100 miles per hour."

The crash was extraordinary, he said: "I was knocked back approximately 61 feet."

Moroney, now a state correctional officer, was injured, and said he survived only because he was wearing a seat belt. The driver of the other car wasn't, and died at the accident scene.

Moroney said his family and friends had been casual about seat belts before his accident. Since then, he said, "They wear seat belts every single day."

Rhode Island is one of 30 states where failing to use a seat belt is a secondary offense, meaning that the police can't stop drivers just for a seat-belt violation, but can charge them with that along with another offense.

Making seat-belt violations a primary offense, where the police stop vehicles for seat-belt violations alone, is controversial because of civil-rights questions. The Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union and groups representing members of minority groups oppose it for fear that giving the police another reason to stop cars would contribute to racial profiling, the discriminatory stopping of vehicles driven by non-whites because of their color.

Dr. Lynne Palmisciano, of the Hasbro Hospital emergency department, described how to protect children in cars:

Under age 1: a rear-facing infant car seat.

Age 1: a forward-facing car seat.

Age 4, or 40 pounds: a booster seat, which raises the child high enough for an adult seat belt to be effective. Adult belts alone don't protect small children when the shoulder belt is too high and crosses above the chest, she said.