August 30, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Students to Get a Buck For Buckling Up

This weekend, more students from F.L. Schlagle High School, in Kansas City, Kan., just might be buckling up.

That's because on Friday, August 31, Safe Kids Metro KC and State Farm Insurance will be holding Bucks for Buckles at the school from 6:15 to 7:30 a.m. Volunteers from the two groups will be in the school parking lots rewarding students with a dollar if they drive or ride in wearing their seatbelts. The program is meant to promote seatbelt usage among teens, and to raise awareness of the traumatic results for those who don't buckle up.

Deb Bumgardner, coordinator of Safe Kids Metro KC, a program of the Maternal and Child Health Coalition, said this is the fourth year the program has been conducted, and Schlagle is the first school in the KCK Public Schools to take part in it.

"Kansas state law now requires that all teens in any seated position in vehicles must be buckled up," Bumgardner said. "Those who aren't will be fined $60, whether they are driving or just riding."

It may take a fine to wake up students about the importance of using seat belts. But it's a small price to pay to be safe, Bumgardner said.

Literature will be handed out to students and parents at Bucks for Buckles, with statistics and information about seatbelt safety. Here are some of the facts:

• In 2006, there were 464 fatalities in Kansas and 70 percent were unbelted
• Studies show that when a driver is buckled up, 85 percent of children are also restrained.
• The force of an impact from a 30 mph crash is like falling headfirst from a three-story building.
• Eighty percent of all crashes occur at speeds of less than 40 mph.
• Seventy-five percent of all crashes occur within 25 miles of home.

Bumgardner said some students may be embarrassed to ask their friends to wear seatbelts. Her favorite response to this involves yet another statistic: 35,000 people die in vehicle crashes each year, but no one has ever died from embarrassment.

Volunteers will have $350 to give away and they're hoping to come away empty-handed — and with more students buckled up!