Officers with OPP West Region’s 13 detachments laid hundreds of charges during the Easter long weekend traffic campaign.
West Region officers laid 168 charges under Ontario’s seat belt law during the course of the annual seat belt education and enforcement campaign, which ran from Friday, April 3 until April 6. This compares to a five-year high of 338 seat belt-related charges laid during the campaign in 2025.
Failure to wear a seat belt caused, or was a contributing factor, in the deaths of 41 Ontarians in collisions on Ontario Provincial Police (OPP)-patrolled roads last year. Fourteen of those deaths were in West Region alone. So far in 2026, four traffic deaths in West Region have been attributed to failure to wear a seat belt.
Along with aggressive driving, impaired driving, distracted driving and driver fatigue, failure to wear a seat belt is one of the leading contributing factors to death, injury, and property damage on the province’s roads and highways.
The OPP will continue to enforce the seat belt law to reduce the number of needless and preventable deaths in Southwestern Ontario and beyond.
