SIXTEEN out of the 22 killed in car crashes so far this year were not wearing their seatbelts, while less than 14 per cent of passengers in the back seats of cars bother to buckle up, the head of the traffic department said yesterday.
The shocking figures were announced as police kicked off an island wide campaign yesterday highlighting the importance of wearing seatbelts.
It coincided with the death yesterday of a 47-year-old asylum seeker in the Tseri industrial area. Driving too fast, he lost control of his car and swerved into the oncoming traffic hitting a truck. He was killed immediately. He too was not wearing his seat belt.
“There have been a lot of accidents and a lot of people have lost their lives so we decided to do this campaign,” said head of the traffic department, Demetris Demetriou. The campaign involves police officers concentrating more on catching these violators, he said, though not at the expense of officers missing out other violations.
The campaign, which will continue until July 17 and includes checking both drivers and passengers, aims to prevent and reduce traffic accidents.
Demetriou stressed that officers will check that back seat passengers in particular are wearing their seat belts. During 2010 only 13.4 per cent of passengers in the back seat were buckled up, including those who had their child in a baby seat.
“Parents must understand that their child will just be thrown forward if they’re not strapped in,” Demetriou said.
Demetriou said that although no one age group or sex are worse than others in terms of whether they wear a belt, a three-year investigation carried out island wide has shown that drivers in the Limassol and Paphos districts are the worst offenders.
“Year by year we’re managing to raise the percentage of people wearing their seat belt, but we have to concentrate on back seat passengers now as the percentage is very low,” said Demetriou.
Statistics for the UK and France show that in 2009 around 95 per cent of the population wore a seat belt whereas countries such as Greece and Italy were below 80 per cent. Rear seat belt wearing for the UK was also at 95 per cent whereas for France it dropped to 82 per cent.
Meanwhile, a police campaign checking how many drivers used their mobile while on the road has just ended. During the campaign, which lasted six days and ended on Sunday, over 1,790 people were caught using their phones while driving. Over 10,000 have been caught since the beginning of the year, up 24 per cent over last year.
