{"id":92827,"date":"2025-05-20T03:30:42","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T07:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/?p=92827"},"modified":"2025-05-19T16:38:57","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T20:38:57","slug":"utoledo-health-community-partners-encourage-safety-belt-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/05_20_2025\/utoledo-health-community-partners-encourage-safety-belt-use","title":{"rendered":"UToledo Health, Community Partners Encourage Safety Belt Use"},"content":{"rendered":"

Local first responders and public health officials joined forces with UToledo Health on Monday to reinforce the importance of wearing seat belts ahead of the Memorial Day holiday and the upcoming summer travel season.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s such a simple thing to do,\u201d said Dr. Alastair Hoyt, a UToledo Health neurosurgeon. \u201cEvery time you get into the car, no matter which position you\u2019re in in the car, just put on your seat belt.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Dr.

Dr. Alastair Hoyt, a UToledo Health neurosurgeon, talks about the danger posed by unbelted crashes during a kick off for the annual Click It or Ticket campaign Monday outside UTMC.<\/p><\/div>\n

Monday\u2019s event, held outside the University of Toledo Medical Center, served as a kickoff for the Click It or Ticket campaign, which encourages seat belt usage and includes an enforcement blitz from now to June 1.<\/p>\n

Mandatory seat belt laws have been on the books in Ohio for nearly 40 years, but safety belt usage in the state was only 85% last year. That\u2019s up from an 18-year low in 2022 but remains below the national average.<\/p>\n

And trauma surgeons continue to encounter accident victims who chose not to buckle up.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe definitely see people come in who were unrestrained,\u201d Hoyt said. \u201cEven though they have all the airbags go off, that doesn\u2019t protect them the same way that wearing a seat belt does.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, not everyone involved in an unbelted crash makes it to the hospital for treatment.<\/p>\n

According to the Ohio State Highway Patrol, from 2020 to 2024 more than 2,500 unbelted vehicle drivers and passengers lost their lives in crashes on Ohio roadways, and 64% of individuals killed in crashes last year were not wearing a seat belt that was available to them.<\/p>\n

\"Representatives

Representatives from UTMC\u2019s trauma and emergency department teams were joined by officials from the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department and several area public safety agencies, including the UToledo Police Department, Toledo Fire and Rescue, the Lucas County Sheriff\u2019s Office and the Ohio State Highway Patrol.<\/p><\/div>\n

Among those who do survive a crash resulting in a serious brain injury, recovery is far from certain.
\n\u201cWhen someone\u2019s brain is injured, we don\u2019t have a way of repairing it. It\u2019s like cracking an egg. You can\u2019t uncrack it. All the things we do in the hospital \u2014 surgery, medication, intensive treatments \u2014 are about preventing the uninjured parts of the brain from becoming injured and allowing people time to heal,\u201d Hoyt said. \u201cThe best thing we can do is try to avoid those types of injuries and seat belts are an important part of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to representatives from UTMC\u2019s trauma and emergency department teams, Monday\u2019s event also was attended by officials from the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department and several area public safety agencies, including the Toledo Police Department, Toledo Fire and Rescue, Maumee Fire and EMS, the Lucas County Sheriff\u2019s Office and the Ohio State Highway Patrol.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The annual event outside UTMC served to kick off this year\u2019s Click It or Ticket campaign ahead of Memorial Day and summer travel season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":849,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,1,7,63],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92827"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/849"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92827"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92831,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92827\/revisions\/92831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}