Gaffney Police Chief John O’Donald and Gaffney High Principal Dr. Quincie Moore join members of local law enforcement agencies Monday during a kickoff for a statewide public awareness campaign promoting the use of seat belts. A motorist wearing a seat belt avoided serious injury while being involved in an accident in the damaged vehicle. By TARA JENNINGS

Ledger Staff Writer

As we enter the “100 deadly days of summer,” law enforcement officers nationwide are pleading with motorists to wear their seat belts to increase their chances of surviving a serious accident.

Local motorists can expect an increase in traffic safety checkpoints now through Labor Day. Statistically, the summer months hold the highest fatality rate.

According to information from the South Carolina Highway Patrol, 327 people in South Carolina died between May 17 and June 6 during a 5-year period between 1999 and 2003. In 2003, 60 people across the state died during the same three-week period and 3,110 people were injured. In 2000, 75 people died and 3,548 people were hurt during the same time frame. There have been more than 31,000 wrecks in that 21-day period during the past five years.

“Our hope is that our citizens will buckle up before they have an accident and before the ticket process,” said Gaffney Police Department Captain Brooks Allison.

Joining with the “Buckle Up South Carolina. It’s the Law and It’s Enforced” and the “Buckle Up in Your Truck” campaigns, the Gaffney Police Department joined with the Blacksburg Police Department, the Cherokee and Spartanburg county sheriff’s offices, and the Clemson University Police Department on Monday at Gaffney High School for the kickoff to the public awareness initiatives. Eight patrol cars, two fire trucks, a helicopter and a wrecked vehicle lined the sidewalk of the school as local authorities discussed the need for buckling up.

“There are 408 reasons to buckle up,” said Michael George of the S.C. Department of Public Safety. “There have been 408 deaths this year.”

George said 75 percent of motorists who died were not wearing seat belts.

“The most common driver error is not buckling up,” said Lance Cpl. Bryan McDougald of the South Carolina Highway Patrol. McDougald is the public information officer for the Highway Patrol and disseminates information regarding fatal wrecks to local media.

“If everyone would buckle up, we would not have half the fatalities we have,” he said. “People think it won’t happen to them. Of the thousands who have died each year, none of them expected to go out and get into a serious collision. People think ‘it won’t happen to me,’ but it happens to more than 1,000 people in South Carolina every year.”

Police are also focusing on motorists traveling in pickup trucks because they are the least likely to wear seat belts. In 2003, there were 1,677 fatalities in pickup truck crashes in the Southeast. Of those fatalities, 71 percent of the occupants involved in the crashes were not buckled up. Roughly 37 percent of the fatal wrecks were rollover crashes.