Lehigh Township’s Regional Police Traffic Safety Program will participate in the Occupant Protection wave from May 17 until June 6.

Also known as Click It or Ticket, police will be heavily concentrating enforcement around the Memorial Day weekend, for not only seat belt violations, but also impaired driving related activities and underage drinking enforcement.

Vehicle crashes are one of the leading causes of death, with most of those fatalities being attributed to unbelted motorists. Currently, the commonwealth’s seat belt usage rate is 88.9%.

Throughout this campaign, officers will be specifically concentrating on motorists who operate a motor vehicle while unbuckled and do not have a proper child restraint system for children who are passengers within the vehicle.

Police will also be conducting checkpoints, roving patrols and cops in shops details in an effort to reduce the number of crashes and fatalities on our roadways.

Motorists are reminded of Pennsylvania’s “Move Over Law,” which requires motorists approaching an emergency response area and are unable to safely merge into a lane further away from the response area to “pass the emergency response area at a speed of no more than 20 mph less than the posted speed limit and reasonable for safely passing.” Fines for offending motorists range from $500 for the first offense to $2,000 for a third and subsequent offense.

Lehigh Township’s Regional Police Traffic Program consists of the following departments, located within Northampton County:

• Lehigh Township Police Department

• Walnutport Police Department

• Moore Township Police Department

• Bushkill Township Police Department

• Colonial Regional Police Department

• Northampton Borough Police

• Upper Nazareth Police Department

• Nazareth Borough Police Department

• Bangor Borough Police Department

• Tatamy Borough Police Department

• Slate Belt Regional Police Department

• North Catasauqua Police Department

• Washington Township Police

• Stockertown Borough Police