Click It or Ticket program celebrates 25 years of success

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — For nearly three decades the NC Governor’s Highway Safety Program has enforced Click It or Ticket, an initiative to ensure you are safe when on the road.

“I’ve had family members killed as a result of car crashes without their seat belt,” NC Governor’s Highway Safety Program Director, Mark Ezzell said.

Those were lives that could have been saved with a quick click of a seat belt.

“As careful as you are you can’t always predict somebody running a red light, or sliding on the ice, or you know maybe yourself being distracted for a moment,” NC First Lady, Kristin Cooper said.

It is a scary moment the NC Governor’s Highway Safety Program is trying to prevent with the program Click It or Ticket.

“This has been one of the most successful public health enforcement programs in the country,” Ezzell said.

Click It or Ticket is now celebrating 25 years of success. Before the program was enforced, 65% of North Carolinians used their seat belts. Now, that percentage is much higher.

“We have 91.4% I believe, which is the highest rate of seat belt usage in the entire Southeast,” Cooper said.

It is a percentage many are proud of including those on the road.

“I want to arrive home safely here and then back home to my children,” driver, Janice Williams said. “And if the officers can get people off the roads who are making bad decisions then that’s something that I support.”

It is an initiative enforced across the state that will not slow down any time soon.

“I would love to see zero people die in car accidents instead of the thousands that we’re still losing every year,” Cooper said.

More than 800 hundred traffic safety professionals attended the celebration, including Cooper who was the key note speaker.