New Seat Belt law for Minnesota
Starting Tuesday, June 9, 2009 Minnesota has a new seat belt law. The old seat beat law, which has been in effect for quite some time now, was that a cop could only give you a ticket for a seat belt violation, only if you were originally involved in some other kind of traffic violation that lead to your stop by the police.
But... the new law is that no matter what and no matter where, you HAVE to wear your seat belt, otherwise a cop can pull you over and ticket you. You do not have to be doing anything wrong, except not wearing your seat belt now.
Also, the old law stated that adults in the front seat needed to wear their seat belt. But adults in the back seat, were not required to. With the new law, EVERYONE in the car, needs to have their seat belts on, too.
The fines for the violation of wearing yoru seat belt start at $25 and can go up, depending on the county. The DPS believes that this will drastically reduce the amount of serious injuries and even deaths due to car crashes. This law ties in with the other new law that is going to go into effect on July 1, 2009 that all children under the age of 8, or under 4' 9" need to be in a booster seat so that the seat belt falls across them correctly.
So from now on, do not ignore the flashing, red seat belt guy, that always dings when you do not put your seat belt on right away. Now he is there to not only save your life, in case of a crash, but to save you time and money from getting pulled over and ticketed.