FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT
We all know we’re supposed to buckle up, whether we’re the driver or a passenger. Warnings of all kinds remind us to fasten our seat belts, including lights, bells, chimes, dings and sometimes our vehicles won’t even start until seat belts are fastened.
But what about the other people in our vehicles? You know, your friends or family in the back seat. Are there any bells, dings, and warnings to remind rear passengers to buckle up? Not necessarily.
Sometimes drivers may not ask or double check to see if their back-seat passengers are buckled in. That’s where we come in—to remind everyone that it’s ILLEGAL to be unbuckled in either the front or back seat, and it’s punishable by fines and fees up to $200.
Children younger than 8 years old must be in a child car seat or booster seat unless they are taller than 4 feet 9 inches. Fines issued to drivers for unrestrained children in their vehicle can be as high as $250 plus court costs.
The safest place for children to ride in a vehicle is the back seat, and all children should be securely fastened in an appropriate safety seat in the back of the vehicle until they reach the age of 13.1
State and national data support TxDOT’s Click It or Ticket campaign, which focuses on enforcing laws mandating that everyone in the vehicle is buckled up.
If that’s not enough, these facts will drive home the importance of everyone buckling up at all times:
- Unbelted backseat passengers can become projectiles in a crash. They can be tossed around inside the vehicle and can even injure or kill people in the front seat.
- In 2024, there were 3,002 traffic crashes in Texas in which unrestrained vehicle occupants sustained fatal or serious injuries.2
- In 2024, of the 483 pickup truck drivers killed on Texas roads, 227 (or 47%) weren’t wearing a seat belt.3
#DriveLikeATexan
1(NHTSA’s Car Seat Recommendations for Children)
2(Represents reportable data collected from the Texas Peace Officer’s Crash Report (CR-3) received and processed by TxDOT as of February 21, 2025)
3Ibid.
