AAA Carolinas supports a strong seat belt law in South Carolina. Currently, failure to wear a seat belt is only a secondary offense, meaning law enforcement may issue a ticket for the offense only if the person has been pulled over for some prior violation.

Some seat belt facts:

• Traffic crashes are the leading killer of children ages 0 to 14.
• When a driver is buckled, children riding with them are buckled 94 percent of the time; when drivers are unbuckled, child restraint use plummets to 30 percent, according to a Ford Motor Co. study.
• The enactment of standard enforcement seat belt laws has proved to increase belt use by 10 percent to 15 percent, according to the National Safety Council.

South Carolina is currently the eighth most dangerous state in the nation for fatal traffic crashes per vehicle miles traveled.

"When only two out of every three drivers wear a seat belt, it is no wonder that so many are injured and killed when a collision occurs," said David E. Parsons, president and CEO of AAA Carolinas. "A primary seat belt law will go a long way toward making South Carolina a safer place to drive and live."

• The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that if belt use rates for front seat passengers in automobiles and light trucks increased from 68 percent to 85 percent, Medicare and Medicaid alone would save $275 million annually.