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Colorado Drivers Falling Short on Seatbelt Use, CDOT Says

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Creative Commons

As travelers pour onto roadways over the Thanksgiving holiday, the Colorado Department of Transportation is warning that the state is falling behind the rest of the nation in buckling up.

Statistics show that while the nation’s overall seat-belt use in 2016 is 90 percent, Coloradoans protect themselves just 84 percent of the time, down by 1 percentage point from the year before. CDOT says the 15 percent of drivers who didn’t buckle up in 2015 accounted for 52 percent of all passenger-vehicle fatalities, and those fatalities are on the rise, spiking by nearly 12 percent from 2014.
 

Gail Binkly is a career journalist who has worked for the Colorado Springs Gazette and Cortez Journal, and was the editor of the Four Corners Free Press, based in Cortez.
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