ITD Office of Highway Safety
sponsoring state high school
basketball tourneys
as part of rural outreach

ITD’s efforts to improve seat belt usage hits the hardwood as the best basketball teams from across the state head to the Treasure Valley soon for the Idaho High School Basketball Championships.

This is all part the Office of Highway Safety’s (OHS) "Rules to LVE By" campaign. In this campaign, OHS is partnering with Dallas Cowboy linebacker Leighton Vander Esch (LVE) to encourage Idahoans to buckle up.

“We’re really excited about this program,” said OHS Manager John Tomlinson. “Talking about seat belts isn’t new to us, but sometimes we need to change the way we talk to get people back into the conversation, and that’s what Leighton is doing for us.”

As OHS planned its statewide media campaign for Rules to LVE By, they decided to try a new approach by sponsoring live streams of the girls and boys state basketball tournaments. OHS has partnered with the NFHS Network for live video streaming and with IdahoSports.com for audio streaming.

“This opportunity was too good to pass up,” said Tomlinson. “We want all Idahoans to buckle up, but with this campaign, we really wanted to target rural communities. Not everyone from a town can make it out to the tournament, so we thought this would be a great way to reach them.”

“Many of the teams are from small, rural towns, and much of the fan base for those teams are from those same communities and travel to watch the boys and girls play basketball," said OHS Grants Officer Bill Kotowski. “We felt it was a natural tie-in for us to engage with these fans at the event, so they can take those good habits back home with them.”

During the last five years, nearly 60% of the people who were killed in passenger vehicle crashes were not wearing their seat belts. More than 80% of those people died on rural roads.
 
Learn more about ITD’s Rules to LVE By by visiting shift-idaho.org/buckleupidaho

Published 03-04-20