Since Monday, the Guardia Civil's Trafico division has been conducting a specific control campaign to check on the wearing of seatbelts and child restraint systems. The campaign will continue until Sunday. As well as the Guardia Civil, local police are involved in these checks.
This is the second such campaign this year. As with the previous one it is on a nationwide scale. Over the course of a week in March, when the first control campaign was undertaken, 315 people were reported for not wearing seatbelts; this was the figure at the national level.
The national traffic directorate is stressing the importance of belts for backseat passengers. In the event of a frontal collision, it points out that a backseat passenger without a belt is eight times more likely to be killed because of impact with front seats and passengers. The directorate also says that in accidents where vehicles turn over, the wearing of a seatbelt reduces the risk of fatality by 77%.