Buckle Up in Your Truck is the message to pickup truck drivers in Missouri and throughout the central region this May. The aggressive public awareness initiative aims to increase safety belt use among occupants of pickup trucks.

Pickup truck drivers and their passengers are among those motorists least likely to regularly wear their seat belts. In fact, national statistics show that they have much lower seat belt usage rates than the occupants of all other vehicles.

In addition, pickup trucks are twice as likely to rollover as cars due to a higher center of gravity. With increased rollovers, and fewer seat belts buckled, the ejection rate for occupants of light trucks in a crash is nearly double the rate for occupants of passenger cars.

In 2005, 223 people were killed in Missouri crashes involving pickup trucks. Of those killed, 81 percent were not wearing a seat belt. The Buckle Up in Your Truck campaign is designed to reduce injuries and deaths from pickup truck crashes and rollovers.

“Too many pickup truck drivers and their passengers are killed in crashes. We want to make sure they are buckled up – every trip, every time,” says Don Hillis, director of System Management.

Missouri is joining forces with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and state and local highway safety and law enforcement leaders across Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska to launch this initiative. Media messages started running April 30 and will continue through May 13. Law enforcement efforts will run May 6-12.

The special Buckle Up in Your Truck enforcement blitz immediately precedes the intensive Click It or Ticket national seat belt enforcement mobilization planned for late May through Memorial Day.

For more information about how your seat belt can help you Arrive Alive, please visit www.buckleupamerica.org or www.saveMOlives.com.