The University Police Department is participating in an intensive campaign to ensure that students and faculty buckle-up during their commutes. The program has been a success for the past twelve years.

Police are looking for violations on campus, although the traffic stops may be made off campus.

As part of the nation-wide ‘Buckle-Up Day And Night’ campaign, University Police will have special patrols out looking for motorists who are not wearing their seatbelts.

People not wearing a seatbelt are 30 times more likely to be ejected from a vehicle. Assistant University Police Chief, Kevin Velzy, has been involved with university police for thirty years.

“Because we are a Police Department on a college campus, the majority of our drivers are of college age. We do have some older people, older drivers, that are employees or some people just passing through campus,” said Kevin.

According to the New York State University Police Department, Motor Vehicle accidents are the number one cause of death for those aged up to fifty-four in the United States.

It has been proven that just wearing a seatbelt reduces the risk of death or injury by fifty percent. As a matter of fact, airbags are not a substitute for seatbelts.

More than half of teens aged thirteen to nineteen and adults aged twenty to forty-four who died in crashes in 2015 were unrestrained at the time of the crash.

Men are more likely than women to be unbuckled.

“The crashes have dropped. Our compliance rate, what they also look for in these grant programs, has gone way up. When we first started our compliance rate was about seventy-five percent, which means seventy-five percent of the people that are required to wear a seatbelt in the front seat of a vehicle. Seventy-five percent of them were, and twenty-five percent were not,” said Kevin.

The compliance rate on campus currently lies at ninety-three percent.

A ticket for unrestrained motorists is fifty dollars with no points initially deducted from the license, whereas distracted driving is worth five points on the license in addition to a fine between fifty and two-hundred dollars.

According to the New York State University Police Department, unrestrained motorists involved in a crash are almost four times as likely to suffer a traumatic brain injury compared to those wearing a seatbelt.

Students from SUNY Oswego find it difficult to park in Commuter Lot 8. When the commuter lot is full, students know the consequences and park in a non-vehicle spot, red brick pavement. Students, like Juliann Geraci and Adam Pignatti, explain their opinion on their struggles. 

“You notice people would pull over those pavements and even if they know they would get the ticket, they would park there and be late to class,” Adam Pignatti said.   

According to University Police, Lieutenant Barbeau. He states the statistic of tickets on the month of February issues 85 tickets given due to non-vehicle parking. He also mentioned the total number of tickets compared from last semester to now, is more of an issue from the beginning of last semester to now.

Juliann Geraci suggests that schools should come up with a better method of developing the spaces in the commuter lot to prevent the issues.