Seat belts are no cure-all

The public safety departments of North Augusta and the city of Aiken are joining the Highway Patrol in stepping up enforcement of South Carolina's tough new seat belt law.

Until early last month, motorists could be ticketed for failure to buckle up only if they were stopped on some other charge, or if they had an unbuckled child in the vehicle. Since Dec. 9, however, drivers can be pulled over solely on the charge of not using their seat belts.

The Palmetto State, with 1,084 fatalities last year, has one of the highest traffic death rates per capita in the nation. It hopes to duplicate the success of other states that toughened their seat belt laws: a cut in road deaths of about 10 percent.

It's way too early to tell yet whether that will happen, or if it will increase the state's buckle-up rate which, even before the tougher law took effect, was already at 65 percent, according to last summer's Highway Patrol survey.

It's reasonable to assume, though, that whenever police hand out more tickets - regardless of what the violations are for - there will be a deterrent effect on bad driving of every sort.

Although seat belts can save lives and their usage should certainly be encouraged, the main cause of most South Carolina road deaths, say troopers, is speeding. Also contributing to the high death toll are narrow and poorly maintained rural roads - often driven on by young, inexperienced drivers who are, all too frequently, drunk or on drugs.

This suggests the stiffer seat belt law won't be a cure-all for South Carolina's unusually high road fatality rate, though it may be a temporary palliative.

Over the long term, the state needs to more vigorously enforce its speed limits, perhaps coupled with harsher penalties, and to upgrade and make safer its shoddy rural roads.