The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
How do you get more rural Manitobans to buckle up? If you're Kevin Young of MPI, you assemble a task force to take an in-depth look at the matter. "My concern is, is an educational poster or brochure sufficient to deal with this issue?" said Young, whose job focuses on vehicle occupant protection. Young, who is based in Winnipeg, recently wrote to some 200 rural municipalities, including the City of Flin Flon, asking for feedback on his task force concept. The task force would be independent of government and MPI, though the latter might fund task force projects. Young's goal is to have representatives from various municipalities on the task force, but so far, the response to the concept has been underwhelming. However, he remains optimistic that more interest will be shown. "We know from (provincial) statistics that the majority of incidents of people being injured or killed in motor vehicle accidents occur in rural Manitoba," he said. The MPI employee felt compelled to assemble the task force after looking at accident statistics for the province. "Every year in this province, we end up with approximately 115 to 130 people who are killed in vehicle collisions," he said. "Somewhere between 40-50 per cent of those people aren't wearing their seatbelts, so that's a pretty significant statistic." Young said that ideas to increase seatbelt usage will be bandied about by the task force when it is assembled. He already has some ideas of his own, including lobbying to have the fine for non-usage raised from the current $100. "I'm not sure if $100 is that significant to people," he said. "If they shot the fine up to $500, would you see an increase in seatbelt usage? Well, I would strongly think you would." Young said that seatbelt usage in rural Manitoba is lower than in larger centres. "I would suspect it has something to do with enforcement," he said. "You would see probably lesser enforcement (in rural Manitoba) than you would in a larger population centre like Brandon or Winnipeg or what have you." Young invites anyone from the public interested in becoming involved with the task force to contact him at (204) 985-1619 or e-mail him at [email protected]
