Above, a child-sized dummy is held by an actor dressed as a crash-test dummy as state police demonstrate to Hope High School students a device that simulates what happens to motorists in a vehicle rollover who are not wearing seatbelts. At left, a child-sized dummy lies at the feet of Hope High School students after flying out of a vehicle during a demonstration on the effect of unbelted passengers.

The Providence Journal Andrew Dickerman

PROVIDENCE — As two “crash test dummies” bore silent witness, officials from the state Department of Transportation and law enforcement leaders yesterday unveiled their newest piece of persuasion for people who don’t use their seat belts.

It is a rollover simulator, an old but freshly painted red Plymouth Reliant missing its engine and trunk compartments that is attached to an axle that turns almost noiselessly and allows the passenger compartment to roll over 360 degrees — repeatedly.

State police Trooper William Corson, who demonstrated the action of the simulator during an announcement of an annual traffic safety campaign, in front of Hope High School, first activated the simulator with four occupants inside using seat belts.

His audience was approximately 40 Hope High School students, at least 15 police officers from different law enforcement agencies and a smattering of DOT representatives.

The occupants were soft gray faceless figures representing a family of four — two parents and two children — and they were to be the victims of a side-impact collision at 25 mph to 30 mph and a rollover. When Corson activated the simulator, the car rolled, and rolled and rolled. And nobody was flung outside the car to suffer imaginary and life-threatening injuries.

Everyone knew what was coming next.

Corson turned off the mechanism. Then he unbuckled the occupants, stepped back and switched the simulator on again. When the two faceless figures representing the children were ejected through the open windows of the car, there nevertheless was a gasp from the crowd.

There were two people standing nearby who were dressed as crash test dummies — the featureless characters with helmets for heads and unexpected personality made familiar by national highway safety campaigns of years past. DOT employees Dan DiBiasio and Donna Koch-Minett portrayed the jump-suited dummies.

As if the faceless “child” figures were his own relatives, the male crash test dummy stepped forward, carefully and silently picked up one of the figures, and then held it in his arms until the event was over.

“Buckling up should become second nature,” declared Michael P. Lewis, director of transportation. Of the 49 highway fatalities in Rhode Island in 2006, 39 people, or 75 percent, died because they failed to wear a seat belt, he said.

The simulator, bought with a federal grant for $25,000 and towed by a state police vehicle, is scheduled to be taken to festivals and high schools, or wherever crowds gather, according to Janis Loiselle, highway safety administrator for the DOT.

Its debut was scheduled to mark the beginning of the annual two-week Click it or Ticket highway safety campaign in which federal money will be spent on police overtime for extra safety patrols.

Col. Brendan Doherty, state police superintendent, vowed “zero tolerance for motorists who do not buckle up.”

As it happens, however, failure to wear a seat belt is still not a primary offense for an adult under state law, which means that a police officer is not supposed to stop a motor vehicle because that officer sees an unbelted adult.

If an officer sees another offense, such as speeding or running a stop sign, then that officer may issue a $75 ticket for a seat-belt violation as a secondary offense, Loiselle explained.

The law does make the failure to wear a seat belt a primary offense if the unsecured person is younger than 18. And an officer may stop a vehicle on that basis alone.

“Seat belts save an estimated 9,500 lives per year” nationally, according to Doherty. But he pointed out that a survey shows that only 78 percent of motorists in the Northeast wear their seat belt. Those least likely to buckle up are males ages 16 through 25.

gsmith@projo.com