During the period of February 10 – February 21 the La Porte Police Department ran 48 hours of Operation Pull Over funded seat belt patrols. These patrols serve to reinforce the message to motorists to obey seat belt and child restraint laws as well as other traffic laws for their own safety; or expect to be ticketed.
During these patrols, officers wrote a total of 71 citations and 66 warnings. Of the citations 51 were for seat belt violations, 3 were for child restraint violations. The other citations were for offenses including Driving While Suspended, Automatic Signal violations, Speeding and other moving violations.
During the past ten days we have had a significant number of persons injured in crashes in La Porte County due in part to the bad weather conditions. In the City of La Porte we have had 46 property damage crashes and 5 personal injury crashes affecting a total of 9 people. Two of the personal injury crashes had occupants that were unrestrained and injured two people.
Fifty-one crashes in eleven days is a significant number of crashes for our community and are certainly attributable in part to the severe winter weather we have been experiencing. The number of injured people would almost certainly have been higher if not for the relatively high seat belt use in our community. “These events should serve as a reminder that crashes can happen to us no matter how you drive. Making sure that you and your loved ones are properly restrained 100% of the time when in a vehicle is the single best strategy that you can have for preventing or reducing traffic crash injuries,” said Captain Tom Heath.
Operation Pull Over is a traffic safety grant program funded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and administered by the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute. The goal of Operation Pull Over is reducing traffic crash injuries and fatalities by promoting passenger restraint use and supporting enforcement aimed at reducing impaired and dangerous driving. You may learn more about Operation Pull Over, the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute, and its other programs by visiting http://www.in.gov/cji.
