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High-Visibility Enforcement and Seat Belt Use
High-Visibility Enforcement (HVE) is a traffic safety approach designed to deter unlawful behaviors and promote voluntary behavior change in accordance with traffic laws. HVE deters risky behavior by reminding motorists through communications and additional enforcement that they may be pulled over for illegal behaviors. HVE also aims to increase public awareness of the importance and benefits of traffic safety laws and their enforcement. Over the past two decades, traffic safety programs have used and evaluated HVE efforts to change many risky behaviors. The evaluations demonstrate that the national Click It or Ticket (CIOT) campaign, as well as HVE campaigns for special populations of drivers with low seat belt use rates, are effective at increasing belt use. Most special programs resulted in 2- to 14-percentage-point increases in observed front seat belt use during daytime hours. HVE, like all traffic safety enforcement, should be applied even-handedly.
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