"If you don't click it, you get a ticket" is the slogan of a campaign this week to get Utahns to buckle their seat belts.
"We're trying to get people motivated to buckle their kids into child safety belts and to wear seat belts (themselves,)" said Chris Kramer, spokesman for Utah Highway Patrol.
The "make it second nature" campaign was launched Tuesday and continues through Labor Day.
It is focused in Davis and Weber Counties, where police believe residents often neglect to use their seat belts.
Kramer said the Utah Highway Safety Division received federal money to pay for overtime shifts for officers from the several participating agencies to enforce new seat-belt laws, which went into effect May 1.
Those new laws require children younger than 4-years-old to be restrained in car seats and all children to be belted.
People 16 to 19 years old who are in the car but not wearing seat belts can receive individual fines in addition to those fines cited to the vehicle's driver.
And police can now pull over cars for the primary reason of not wearing seat belts.
Before, police had to have another reason to pull a vehicle over before checking for belts.
Also under the previous law, only children younger than 2-years-old had to be in car seats.
From the beginning of May through the beginning of this week, Kramer said, police were more lenient on ticketing for violations of the new seat-belt law.
But not anymore. "We've got a zero-tolerance mode now," Kramer said.
The fine for non-belted drivers or passengers is $45.
"Our goal is not to write tickets," Kramer. "That's not what it's about. We're trying to get people motivated to be safe. It saves lives. We want people to have a happy holiday weekend."
Kramer said most of the children killed in car accidents are not buckled.
E-MAIL: lhancock@desnews.com