The Kansas Legislature has successfully passed Senate Bill 89 which, among other things, increases fines from $10 to $30 for a person 18 years of age and older who is not wearing a seatbelt in a passenger car when that car is in motion.

Governor Sam Brownback signed the bill into law.

Twenty dollars from each $30 seatbelt violation fine will be diverted to the Seat Belt Safety Fund which was established with the signing of the bill. The fund will be administered by the Secretary of Transportation to fund an expansion of student-driven Seatbelts Are For Everyone (SAFE) program to be available to every high school in Kansas.

The SAFE program is active in Junction City.

Junction City Police Department (JCPD) Chuck Leithoff said that Junction City High School does participate in the program.

“It’s a program that is sponsored by the State, it’s Seatbelts Are For Everyone, and we have a group at the high school – the Key Club that manages that program for us,” said Leithoff. “They put out announcements once a month through the school about wearing your seatbelt; and they do some checks for us like peer checks and they keep stats of who is wearing their seatbelts and who is not.”

Leithoff added that the a lot of the work done toward seatbelt usage with high school students is peer driven.

The JCPD recently participated in the Click it or Ticket program to promote seatbelt use around the high school and in the community.

SAFE is a program that began in 2009 in Crawford County to address low seatbelt use among young drivers. At the end of 2016 the SAFE program – a Kansas initiative – was operating in four out of ten high schools across the state, accounting for 142 schools in 62 counties.

The passage and signing of this new law allows funding for the other six out of ten high schools that are unable to participate in the program. The law is unique in that it provides necessary funding for programs not through taxes or fees but from fines for violators of the seatbelt law.