, wtop.com
WASHINGTON – Metropolitan Police are ramping up efforts to ticket people who drive without buckling up, even at night.
This focused enforcement is happening in the District, where driving without a seatbelt is considered a primary offense.
That means cops can pull over drivers even if that is the only thing they are doing wrong.
A ticket will result in a $50 fine and two points against the driver’s license, and Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier says her officers wrote about 10,000 such tickets last year.
Speaking on , Lanier says before she became a police officer she couldn’t stand to wear a seatbelt and didn’t.
“After I started in this job and then more importantly after I spent two years in the traffic fatality unit, I have seen enough that I don’t pull out of my driveway without a seatbelt,” she said.
“Relatively minor collisions … can have devastating consequences if you’re not wearing your seatbelt, but it’s extremely rare for us to see fatalities of a person who is wearing a seatbelt unless there’s an extremely high speed rate.”
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