Madison among Ky. counties taking part in program to increase seat belt use

MADISON COUNTY, Ky. (WKYT) - Madison County is among the Kentucky counties participating in a rural roads study aimed at keeping drivers safe on rural roads.

High Five Rural Traffic Safety Project selected five counties for a year-long seat belt education, enforcement and engineering program.

Madison County officials and officials with the High Five Program hope the program is going to be mutually beneficial. In the short term, Madison County is going to get funding to help sheriff’s deputies and state police do more patrols focusing on seatbelt enforcement and, in the long run, High Five officials can see if this type of program really we’ll convince more people to buckle up.

“We’re doing it in Kentucky and we’re doing it in Arkansas for 12 months and then we’ll collect data to see did it raise seat belt usage in the counties that we’re performing the program in,” said Andrew Chiles, research assistant with the High Five Project.

He says the project is all about trying to encourage more people to wear seat belts and hopefully decrease the number of deadly accidents as a result.

Chiles told us the percent of people who wear seat belts in Kentucky sits in the high 80, but that means there’s a good 12-13% of Kentuckians who don’t.

“That number goes up in rural counties and it becomes even more people unbelted and, ultimately, it is the simplest solution to keep you safe in the instance of a crash,” Chiles said.

For the next year, Kentucky State Police and the Madison County Sheriff’s Office will get additional funding to pay for troopers and deputies to take extra shifts patrolling areas where they see a high number of fatalities, checking for seatbelts and educating drivers about the importance of wearing a safety belt.

Local officials said Wednesday morning this isn’t necessarily about writing tickets, this is more about connecting with the community and teaching them about how a seatbelt is a life-saving tool.

At the end of that 12-month period, Chiles and his team will be able to look back over that data from the five counties in Kentucky and help determine just how effective the program was.

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