{"id":22284,"date":"2025-05-13T22:04:21","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T04:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/click-it-or-ticket-enforcement-begins-in-colorado-montezuma-county\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:12:59","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:12:59","slug":"click-it-or-ticket-enforcement-begins-in-colorado-montezuma-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/click-it-or-ticket-enforcement-begins-in-colorado-montezuma-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Click It or Ticket enforcement begins in Colorado, Montezuma County"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Click
Click it or Ticket seat belt enforcement period will run from June 15 to July 21.<\/span>Journal file photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

To encourage drivers and passengers to buckle up on the roads, the Colorado Department of Transportation announced the start of its Click It or Ticket enforcement, effective Monday, May 12.<\/p>\n

From now until Saturday, June 1, CDOT will support Colorado State Patrol and 39 law enforcement agencies across the state \u201cfor the largest seat belt campaign of the year,\u201d according to a news release<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Click It or Ticket is a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration campaign. It recognizes how \u201cmore than half of all vehicle fatalities have been unbuckled,\u2019 the news release reads.<\/p>\n

In fact, \u201c186 people died in Colorado in 2024 while not wearing a seat belt,\u201d said Col. Matthew C. Packard, chief of the Colorado State Patrol, in the news release.<\/p>\n

Already this year, 49 people have died in collisions, unbuckled.<\/p>\n

To curb these numbers, this 21-day window of heightened enforcement will \u201cfocus on issuing citations to unbuckled drivers,\u201d the news release said.<\/p>\n

In Montezuma County, 87.62% of people use seat belts, which is just above the state average, said Sam Cole, the safety communications manager at CDOT.<\/p>\n

During the most recent seat belt enforcement in April, officers across Colorado issued a total of 1,108 citations. In Cortez, the police department issued two.<\/p>\n

During the present Click It or Ticket effort, the Cortez Police Department said it will be increasing patrol for such violations. The Montezuma County Sheriff\u2019s Office, however, will not because \u201cWe don\u2019t have funding for vehicles,\u201d said Sheriff Steve Nowlin.<\/p>\n

Remember, \u201cColorado law requires the driver and every front seat passenger of a motor vehicle \u2026 to wear a seat belt whenever the vehicle is in operation on a street or highway,\u201d the news release said.<\/p>\n

Fines start at $65 for violating the law, \u201cand parents or caregivers caught with an improperly restrained child can receive a minimum fine of $82,\u201d the news release said.<\/p>\n

Since Click It or Ticket started in 2002, seat belt use across Colorado went from 72% to 88%.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see traffic deaths increase during the summer months on Colorado roads,\u201d said CDOT\u2019s Office of Transportation Safety Director Darrell Lingk. \u201cDrivers need to buckle up at all times.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

be heightened patrol for seat belt violations till June 1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[576,28,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado-department-of-transportation","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77649,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22284\/revisions\/77649"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22284"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}