During July through September the Roseburg Police Department will have some extra patrols out working traffic enforcement, with a specific focus on safety belt use, distracted driving and speeding. These focused patrols are made available due to grants received from Oregon Impact and the Oregon Department of Transportation. In 2017 alone, seat belts saved an estimated 14,955 lives and could have saved an additional 2,549 people if they had been wearing seat belts. Seat belts have been proven to be one of the best ways to save your life in a crash. Yet many still don’t buckle up. Worse still, not wearing a seat belt is a habit that will pass on to impressionable youth, who in turn will think it’s safe to not buckle up. Distracted driving is one of the fastest growing safety issues on the roads today. Distracted drivers aren’t just a threat to themselves: they’re a danger to everyone else on the road. The national distracted driving effort focuses on ways to change the behavior of drivers through legislation, enforcement, public awareness, and education.
