From Art Campos:
One unlucky motorist may have offered up a little too much information when a Roseville police officer stopped him for not wearing a seat belt during the recent "Click It or Ticket" campaign.
Police spokeswoman Dee Dee Gunther said the officer asked the man, "Why do you think I stopped you?"
The puzzled motorist replied, "Because I just ran that stop sign?"
The officer, who hadn't seen the stop-sign violation, issued him only the seat belt citation, Gunther said.
During the three-week enforcement campaign, Roseville police issued 636 tickets to non-wearers of seat belts, she said. Officers also observed that 92 percent of drivers in the city were wearing seat belts. During last year's Click It or Ticket campaign, police noticed that 85 percent of motorists wore belts.
Gunther said she and the officers are amused by the creativity of the excuses made by motorists who are being cited for failing to wear seat belts.
The most common excuse for not wearing a seat belt is that the driver had just pulled onto the roadway and hadn't had time to buckle up, she said.
But during last month's campaign, two drivers told police that their doctors had advised them not to wear seat belts, while another motorist explained that he left his car windows open overnight and the lawn sprinklers left his seat belt all wet, Gunther said.
In another incident, an officer pulled over a vehicle carrying a 17-year-old passenger who was hanging his upper body out of a rear window, she said.
The boy's explanation?
"We're playing a game called 'fugitive,' and I thought I saw the fugitive under a parked car, so I took my seat belt off to lean out the window for a better look."
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