Thursday, February 2, 2012

Students at one Wichita high school got a little bit of a rude awakening this morning. A seat belt enforcement by police!

It happened at Wichita Northwest high School, where nearly 30 teenagers learned the importance of "Click It or Ticket." A number of students even sent angry tweets, which caught our attention.

The parking lot of any high school is packed with cars. Many of them are driven by teenagers who are young and impressionable. Some of those teens learned a hard lesson Thursday.

The students we tracked down Thursday may have only clicked their seat belts because they knew we were taping them. But as the kids left for lunch at Wichita Northwest Thursday, they did so with a firm reminder as to why they should buckle up.

"They think once they get into a car, that nothing's going to happen to them," explained School Resource Officer Jim McCargo. "But there are other drivers out there who are doing things they shouldn't be doing. It's not just their driving."

But some students felt the seat belt enforcement could have been handled better even though McCargo publicly announced reminders to wear their seat belts during morning announcements the last two days. McCargo even alerted the students that there might be a surprise waiting for them.

"I just don't think it was for my safety at all," said Northwest junior Michael Stout. "I think they offended me. I can understand the importance of protecting our safety and respecting the law, but the law can work against you in this case when it causes this many students to get that high of a raise on their insurance."

Stout says he was wearing his seat belt as he always does and did not receive a ticket this morning.

Other students said the crackdown created even more of a traffic jam getting into school than normal.

"It's good practice," said Morgan Wiltse. "It's good to keep everybody safe, but it was really confusing and caused a lot of traffic backup getting into school."

"I wear my seat belt because, whether I like it or not, it's the law and it's what I have to do," Stout said, "which is why it upsets me more when I'm accused of not doing it. Or being threatened with getting a ticket for doing nothing wrong."

By the way, Wichita Police say they are planning other seat belt enforcement activities at many other Wichita-area high schools in the coming days.