The Franklin Police Department has a $2,000 budget boost to pay for officer overtime hours during the Click it or Ticket campaign from May 23 to June 5.

The city will be reimbursed through a mini grant from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Chief Roger Solomon said.

“It’s quite sufficient,” Solomon said. “It equates out to around 40 hours of enforcement action. That equates to safer roads, hopefully a decrease in fatalities and a decrease in alcohol and drug-related crashes.”

According to the NHTSA, more people wear seat belts during the daylight hours when they are the most visible to police. But at night, seat belt usage decreases.

“People see that there is a lower traffic rate so they think it’s safer, which is incorrect because your alcohol offenses are at night time, so that’s a misconception,” Solomon said. “More motor vehicle crashes happen due to impairment at night time.” 

Click it or Ticket is an annual nationwide program aimed at educating the public about seat belt usage.

“This mobilization is created to crack down on violators 24/7, but a strong enforcement effort is urged between the nighttime hours of 6 p.m. and 5:59 a.m. due to the significant number of violators and fatal crashes during this time,” according to the NHTSA website dedicated to this year’s safety campaign.

Nationwide, the number of traffic fatalities in 2014 is down to 32,675 people from 32,894 in 2013. However, the number of people injured in crashes has increased during that same time period to 2.34 million people injured on the nation’s roadways in 2014 from 2.31 million in 2013.

“If you look at nationwide, the injury totals actually increase. … But the death totals went down. I think occupant safety is a big key in that. Seat belt usage is actually up to 88.5 percent. People are starting to understand the correlation that surviving a crash increases with seat belt usage,” Solomon said.

Almost half of the people killed nationwide in crashes in 2014 were not wearing seat belts.

Franklin city commissioners agreed to accept the grant during the commission’s April 11 meeting.

“They are very supportive of this,” Solomon said.

— Follow Assistant City Editor Deborah Highland on Twitter @BGDNCrimebeat or visit bgdailynews.com.