By Maria Carter
Kansas City, MO – A Missouri safety group hopes to get a stricter seatbelt law on the books. The Missouri Safety Council wants officers to be able to stop vehicles when drivers and passengers clearly are not wearing seatbelts. Under current state law, seatbelt violations are only secondary offenses, so the vehicle has to be pulled over first for another offense. The Safety Council's Dale Findlay says when other states have enacted similar laws they've seen seatbelt usage climb.
Findlay: "What we know is that when you increase seatbelt usage, you reduce fatalities and you reduce serious injuries. It's just as plain as the knows on my face that that will happen."
Findlay says changing the law would save 90 lives and prevent more than one-thousand serious injuries each year. Similar legislation was introduced last year but did not get a hearing.