>....
>> How does the officer know you had your belt on or not??? >
Here in Illinois some time ago, shortly after the mandatory seat belt law
was passed, a police officer would sometimes stand near a coin box on the
tollway and check for seat belt usage as the cars passed through the toll
booth. Those cars with occupants not using the seat belts were waved over
to the side of the road and issued tickets for substantial cash fines.
This practice raised such a public uproar that the law was shortly ammended
to disallow stopping and ticketing a motorist soley for the seat belt
violation.
Now if you are stopped by a cop for any other reason and he happens to
notice a seat belt violation, then you can still be ticketed for it. I
think this is most often done in conjunction with not having the kids
buckled up in the back seat. In any case it usually results in the
issuance of two tickets, one for the belts and one for something else (such
as speeding), so there is no argument that you were stopped just for the
belt violation.
Barney Gaylord
1958 MGA with an attitude
http://www.ntsource.com/~barneymg
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