Local Notes

Volume 5, Number 1 - Winter 2001

Mayor's Council for a Safe Community

The Mayor's Council for a Safe Community in Minot, North Dakota, takes a multifaceted approach to occupant protection. Its Buckle Up or Get Busted program works with six local radio stations to sponsor live remote broadcasts at which Safe Community members talk about occupant protection. Drivers who come to the broadcast site and are properly buckled receive prizes, including coupons for free oil changes or meals at local restaurants. The radio stations also air buckle-up PSAs developed by the Mayor's Council. The Minot High School Key Club is conducting pre- and post-test surveys to help judge the campaign's effect.

Buckle Up or Eat Glass is a related effort taking place at Minot High School. Kristen Parlow, director of the Mayor's Council, explains that this program targets drivers of pick-ups (especially young men) and their passengers because they have low seat belt usage rates. Members of the high school's DECA Club conduct educational activities and distribute prizes in the school parking lot, and reinforce the buckle-up message with posters and peer education activities in driver's education classes. Buckle Up or Eat Glass is using surveys to measure the program's impact. Parlow explains, "We put a lot of effort into these programs, and we want to make sure they are making an impact."

Another key activity in the Mayor's Council campaign is training local law enforcement officers about North Dakota's seat belt laws and the importance of enforcing them. The council also conducts child safety seat clinics and is planning several public education events on occupation protection and impaired driving.

For more information, contact Kristen Parlow at (701) 839-0488 or safecity@web.ci.minot.nd.us.

Macomb County

In 1965, the major insurance companies threatened to stop writing new automobile insurance policies in Michigan unless something was done to lower the state's high rate of motor vehicle crashes. In response, the Macomb County Board of Commissioners and the County Road Commission established the Traffic Safety Association of Macomb County (TSA), which, in partnership with law enforcement agencies and other organizations, has worked to improve traffic safety in Macomb County for more than 35 years.

In the last five years, TSA has created a model in which it organizes and partners with Safe Communities coalitions within Macomb County to respond to the traffic safety needs of individual communities while helping to make the entire county a safer place in which to drive, bicycle, and walk.

In 1998, TSA sent a letter to every community in the county, offering to assess their traffic safety needs using ACTS, a tool developed by the Michigan Office of Highway Safety. (More information on ACTS can be found in the summer 2001 edition of BSC.) The towns of Centerline, Clinton Township, Harrison, New Baltimore, Richmond, Roseville, Sterling Heights, and Utica accepted this offer. After completing the assessment, TSA helped each community establish a Safe Communities coalition. The eight Macomb County Safe Communities coalitions work with TSA to implement projects and activities in their own communities. By holding periodic meetings of all the programs, program staff are able to coordinate their efforts.

The coalitions take full advantage of TSA's other activities, which include operating impaired driving and other traffic offender programs for the courts, conducting child safety seat inspection clinics, and distributing child safety seats through the United States Department of Agriculture's Women, Infants, and Children program. Other activities sponsored by TSA and its Safe Communities affiliates include alcohol and drug awareness training for high school counselors, child safety seat training for law enforcement officers, and school-based bicycle safety programs.

For more information, contact Gail Peterson, executive director of the Traffic Association of Macomb County. Telephone: (810) 293-4660; e-mail: trafficsafety@voyager.net.

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