Seat Belt Sting Operation?

[DaVinci]

Our next door neighbor just told us a disturbing story. This is a law abiding senior citizen who volunteers and is, generally speaking, a fine citizen of Puna. Recently in Pahoa, she was caught in what she describes as a sting operation. Four police officers had apparently been assigned to downtown Pahoa to ticket offenders of the seat belt law. Okay, fine, I accept a task force assignd to a specific area to ferret out offenders of a valid law that is on the books. Anyone caught violating the law knows they are going to get a ticket. But the way this group of policemen went about their task is particularly troubling: my friend stepped out of her car, noticed one of the policemen across the street, asked him if she was parked lawfully, and he responded, "You're fine." She then went into a shop, emerged several minutes later and got back into her car. The officer was still manning his post, presumably as a spotter. My friend started her car, put it in gear, and as she was pulling out of her spot, reached around for her seat belt and began putting it across her body so that she might buckle it. Moments later, all four policemen converged on her position, and she was stopped. She was given a ticket for violating the seat belt law, even though she was fastening her seat belt as she was pulling out of her parking spot. Evidently, the car cannot be moving prior to the fastening of the belt. My questions: a) Has anyone else on Punaweb heard of such a thing? Or been victim to such treatment? b) Is it just me, or does this seem like a dubious use of our limited police resources? c) Doesn't this kind of quota based enforcement of the law presuppose that a certain fixed percentage of the public are violating it? And if the police assigned to such a task force find that by and large, the public are in fact complying with the law, isn't that when this kind of entrapment and strict reading become too tempting for officers who have been commanded to go out and obtain said quota? Doesn't that then also sour the public against the police? Is this really how we all want to live here on our island paradise? Curious to know how my fellow Punatics feel about this......

[Carey]

The HPD s setting up DUI & "click it or ticket" stops around the island this week. Notice of this was in the paper prior... so the "sting" was not secret....


just be aware....

[missydog1]

The HPD are well known for prioritizing seat belt enforcement. Look at the money put into large signs saying Click It or Ticket.

I am being 100% honest here, Da Vinci. I know that the belt needs to be fastened before I put the vehicle in motion, and I know it so well that I feel reckless when I drive a few yards before doing it. Of course my car is beeping at me the whole time if I try it. ETA that I only do this occasionally and on private property. I'm real careful to be belted before I am on the street.

Your friend has a bad driving habit. That has nothing to do with being a fine citizen and a good person. She needs to fasten her seat belt first. For one thing, it is distracted driving to be pulling out and dealing with the seat belt. All her attention should be on pulling out and observing cars and pedestrians. So from your description, she deserved the ticket, sorry. I wasn't there and of course don't know if there were extenuating circumstances.

I have been here nine years and this is business as usual around the island. In North Kohala, I have watched them use two cars. One spots the seat belt scofflaw and radios the one up the road, who pulls the car over.

Yes, I wish they would spend more time on DUI and speeding, BUT there is this to be said. When you read about the horrific accidents on our roads, often the person who is now dead was not belted. That includes children. The island mentality has been slow to adopt the practice of ALWAYS buckling up, and people die and are scarred from it.

This program is not limited to Puna, nor even to this island. It is statewide. Everyone is being "stung" fairly equally. Actually less in Puna because it has fewer officers.

[DaVinci]

Thanks for the insight Kathy, Carey. Just in case I wasn't clear in my initial post, I'd like to reiterate that my friend does buckle her seat belt every time she drives. From your post, it seems like you didn't really understand that. And she agrees (as do I) that the police have every right to send out teams like the one she encountered. If the "spotter" noticed a driver coming down the road without a belt on, pulling into a spot and stopping, or even driving on, well, that driver broke the law and they deserve a ticket. My friend was buckling her belt, because she buckles her belt every time she drives her vehicle. When you speak about horrific accidents due to drivers who did not buckle up, your implication in unfair. My friend buckles her belt EVERY time she drives. Did you guys get it that time? I'm not sure there is a lot of empirical data that would support the idea that my friend's "bad habit" causes the death and destruction that you seem to think it does. I remain convinced that this sort of enforcement is not productive, as it serves only to frustrate an otherwise energetically law abiding citizen, and make her feel as though she were as much a scofflaw as those who unabashedly flout the law without reservation.

[PaulW]

People who break the law always think it's a "dubious use of our limited police resources" when they get caught.
You know she always buckles her belt, but the police don't know that. There she is, right in front of police officers, and she breaks the law anyway. Obviously she doesn't know you're supposed to buckle up before you start moving.

The police were doing her a favor by giving her that ticket. Now she knows what she's been doing wrong and she can correct it, before someone gets killed or injured (most likely her).

How much was the ticket for, by the way?

[KeaauRich]

..and she was moving as she was buckling. Suppose the belt got jammed and she turned to see what the hangup was just as a kid ran in front of her car? So maybe I'd have cut her slack for the belt and but I'd have given her a reckless driving citation - just as if she were talking on her cell phone, doing her nails, etc.

[missydog1]

Da Vinci,
that's not what I was saying at all. Assume better, please.

I talked about how the general emphasis on seat belt buckling by the HPD has some justification because many on the island do not buckle up. You asked what people thought of the enforcement. I saw your friend as one little piece of the big picture of seat belt enforcement. Why, because this is an ongoing program, with a broad scope, and not an isolated incident in Pahoa.

I would not wish to attempt to paint your friend as in some way responsible for carnage on the highway. Most of the accidents I hear about where there is carnage, it's the people in the car that was being driven recklessly in some manner who also get thrown. (Sometimes children, sometimes teenagers.)

What I said that specifically applied to your friend is that we should all know to be buckled up before the car moves, and it's a bad driving habit to not do so. That doing the buckling action combined with pulling out could in some situations be risky to pedestrians or other traffic. KeaauRich and Paul saw the same potential.

The fact that she buckles up on the real highway is great. Good for her. She should. Doesn't earn her a pass on belated buckling though. She should also have buckled up before she took her car out of park.

Being 100% honest like I said, if it had happened to me, exactly like that, I would have kicked myself real hard for not buckling up with police right in the vicinity, same as I would if I rolled through a stop sign in front of an officer. Sometimes you get away with that bit of rope, that near-but-not-complete compliance, and sometimes you get busted.

When you get busted, don't you get mad at yourself? I do.
I am not in any way suggesting that her habits have any connection to highway fatalities, and there's no need to sarcastically ask if I got that she regularly uses her seat belt. Of course I got that. I also got that she began driving before she did so.

You seem to think that is OK as long as she gets it done shortly after the car gets moving, but I don't agree, the police don't agree, and the law doesn't doesn't excuse it. So now she knows.

[hotinhawaii]

Being a police officer is a difficult job. Enforcing the law fairly demands a clear line that, when crossed, is a violation. Examples are: being in an intersection when a light turns red, coming to a complete stop at a stop sign, buckling before moving. If your friend crossed the line, she deserves a ticket. She may be a very good person and safe driver 99.9% of the time, but she crossed the line. The officers did the right thing. Good for them. I have done the same thing before and would hate to get a ticket for that too though.

[Kapohocat]

My friend had the same thing happen to him at Cash N carry a few years ago. He got in, started car, and as he has a stick when he was buckling the seat belt, the tire turned maybe a 1/4 turn. he got a ticket.

The cops saw him buckling his seat belt.

He went to court for his ticket and the judge knocked it down 50% and told him "engage seatbelt before starting car".

Because of my friend's story, I always *try* to buckle before I ever turn the key. Damn seat belt tix are expensive! And the insurance company doesn't differentiate between moving and not moving.

[oink]

Cops use discretion when enforcing laws all day every day. Cops assigned to "Traffic" are notorious for showing no mercy with traffic laws (as in "he'd write his own mother"). The incident, as described, sounds pretty chicken shlt to me, but being it's the "Click it or Ticket" push there probably is something akin to a quota (but not). There also may be a supervisor screaming for zero tolerance. Unless things have changed, the driving factor is that a bunch of federal highway bucks is tied into the states seatbelt compliance rate.

Pua`a
S. FL
Big Islander to be.