Bucks County High School Seatbelt Safety Challenge

According to statistics gathered in 2008, seatbelt use by students who drive to Bucks County high schools averaged around 60 percent. While alarming on its own, this low rate of seatbelt use became more concerning when compared with the 90 percent seatbelt use by all adults in Bucks County at the time. In order to increase seatbelt use among students who drive to Bucks County schools, TMA Bucks stepped up to deliver a strong message to these students:

Seatbelts Save Lives

Unannounced baseline surveys of seatbelt usage by student drivers are conducted at all public and private high schools throughout the county every fall. Each school’s survey results are then forwarded to the administration with an invitation to participate in the challenge to increase the number of students wearing seatbelts.

A student group at each high school then works to actively promote seatbelt use within the student body using posters, school-wide announcements and other creative messages.

Each spring, an unannounced follow-up survey is conducted at each of the participating schools. The school with the highest overall seatbelt use and the school with the greatest percentage increase in seatbelt use are both awarded with perpetual trophy plaques and cash grants for safety-related use by the school. These trophies and grants are given by TMA Bucks.

As part of the Bucks County High School Seatbelt Safety Challenge all high schools have the opportunity to also produce and submit a 30-second video PSA on teen driver safety as part of our Teen Driver Safety Video PSA Challenge powered by Comcast. The videos can deal with any aspect of driver safety including seatbelts, texting, distracted driving, impaired driving, speeding, etc.

The school selected as the winner will get a $500 cash grant and their video will play on Comcast.

The winning video is selected by teen writers from the “Teen Takes” staff of the Bucks County Courier Times & The Intelligencer.

The Program Delivers!

Each year of the seatbelt challenge the total combined percentage of student driver seatbelt use by participating schools has increased from the fall semester to the spring semester.