Seven Students $100 Richer in Police Seat Belt Poster Contest

The contest: Draw a poster in which you remind students, parents and teachers to use seat belts. The prize: $100 from .

That's some pretty serious cash if you're in grade school, and seven Plainfield students are going to have a lot of spending money in their pocket this summer thanks to the third annual Seat Belt Reminder Design Contest sponsored by the .

Every student in 's seven elementary schools was invited to submit an entry, said Sgt. Eric Munson, the police department's traffic safety officer. The only requirements were that the original artwork be in color, include the school name and mascot, and feature a "Click-It-or-Ticket" message, he said.

"I wanted to get them to think about traffic safety," Munson said. "It's geared toward not just the kids but parents, teachers and staff."

The winners were Trina Bhattacharyya, Freedom Elementary; Armond Bullock, Grand Prairie; Ethan Kelly, Central; Katie Jasko, Eagle Pointe; Ryan Sorrells, Eichelberger; Jill Klatt, Lincoln; and Rebecca Lau, Walker's Grove.

Even after the prize money is spent or stashed away in the bank, the winners' artwork will live on. Munson has each winning poster made into two metal signs that are posted at the exits of each school.

This is the third year for the contest, he said. High school students did it first in 2009, followed by middle school students in 2010.

The cost is relatively inexpensive for the police department because the bank donates the prize money and Plainfield Signs Inc. does the design scans free of charge, Munson said. The village of Plainfield's sign department is responsible for making and erecting the actual sign boards, he said.

Plainfield is fortunate in that it's seat belt compliance rate is very high -- an average 95 percent, he said. The department is constantly doing checks, 1,000 vehicles at a time, so they can do enforcement campaigns in residential areas where compliance might be slipping, he said.

Kids are pretty good about following the law because they've been doing it all their lives, he said. But adults can be resistant, typically because they resent the government telling them what to do, they think air bags will protect them in a crash or they think they have a better chance at surviving an accident if they're ejected from their car, Munson said.

The latter two assumptions are erroneous, he said. "You're seven times more likely to die if you're ejected from the vehicle," he said. And airbags are not meant to be used without seat belts, he said, in part because without the restraint device, you'll "submarine" below your dashboard when the vehicle stops but your body does not.