By LEONARD GRAY

LAPLACE – The message from Reserve Telephone Company and the St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff’s Office was clear: Buckle up or feel the heat.

With that, deputies will be setting up road blocks from time to time during the rest of the summer, checking to see who is wearing their seatbelts in their vehicles. Those who are not will be ticketed, according to Sheriff Wayne L. Jones.

Motorists who are wearing their seatbelts will be rewarded – with a free bottle of hot sauce bearing an RTC label.

Catherine Olivier and Rosalind Millet recently presented Jones with several cases of hot sauce, most with lollipops or key chains attached, urging motorists to buckle up.

This push for seat belt safety is backed by a $5,400 grant from the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission to promote seatbelt use and adherence to seat belt laws. Those laws include children being buckled in and staying in the rear seat and all front seat passengers wearing seatbelts. According to state law, if anyone in a vehicle is not wearing a seatbelt, the driver can be ticketed.

“When people get rewarded for it, they may continue the same action,” Jones commented.

Jones observed that in most traffic accidents, wearing a seatbelt usually makes the difference between minor injuries and major injuries or death.

“When seatbelts were used in a vehicle involved in a crash, more than half walked away with no injuries. In other words, if you don’t wear a seatbelt, you are twice as likely to die or be seriously injured in a crash.”

The grant money will finance 50 off-duty deputies to operate the checkpoints. The fine for non-compliance is $25 per violation.

Lt. Rick Hylander, traffic commander, said St. John Parish averages 130 traffic accidents per month, including 36 hit-and-run accidents.

“This is just the beginning of a massive, high-visibility enforcement effort by all law enforcement agencies to detect violators of Louisiana’s seatbelt laws. We are instituting a zero-tolerance policy on seatbelt usage, and we will be strictly enforcing it,” Jones said.