Northamptonshire Police officer's horror tales of what can happen to motorists who still refuse to belt up

A Northamptonshire Police officer has spoken of his horror that thousands of county motorists still take a deadly gamble by failing to belt up.

PC Dave Lee, of the force Safer Roads Team, is part of a road safety crackdown on anyone not wearing a seat belt as part of a three-week National Police Chiefs Council campaign launched on Monday (June 6).

Seat belts have been compulsory in the UK for drivers and front seat passengers since 1983 and for rear seat passengers since 1991.

Yet PC Lee revealed: “Having attended a number of fatal road traffic collisions where people have been ejected from the car, the consequences of not wearing a seat belt just aren’t worth contemplating.

“Not wearing one, you’re 30 times more likely to be ejected from a vehicle and twice as likely to die from injuries as a result of a collision.

“Wearing a seat belt in a car is such a basic piece of road safety advice and could be the difference between life and death in a road collision.

"So it’s disappointing some people still fail to belt up or wear seat belts incorrectly."

Not wearing a seat belt is one of the ‘fatal four’ offences — alongside speeding, drink or drug-driving and using a phone — which are most commonly linked to road deaths and serious injuries.

Official data shows more than one in five car occupants killed every year for the last six years were not wearing seat belts.

Over a quarter of males who died were not strapped in.

PC Lee added: “Reducing the number of people who are killed or seriously injured on our county’s roads remains a priority.

“For the next few weeks, we will be out and about across the county looking for people who can’t spend five seconds putting their seat belt on.”

This campaign, which runs until June 26, aims to raise awareness of the dangers of not wearing a seat belt first through education and advice and then enforcement with fixed penalty fines.