It's not quite

6 p.m. on the official beginning of the "dangerous" Thanksgiving

travel holiday, and already Fayette County Deputy Sheriff Doug Hardy runs

into some gruff from a motorist.

The female

driver of a blue jeep doesn't think she should be ticketed for not wearing

her seatbelt. While Hardy's talking to her, she flicks a cigarette butt

out her window.

"I just

didn't want to put it in the ashtray of my car," she explained sheepishly

as Hardy handed her tickets for the seatbelt violation and littering.

"Our courts

kind of frown upon littering," Hardy said from his patrol car while

he completed the paperwork.

The rest of

the evening was mostly peaceful for Hardy. There were no weaving drivers

to be found and few speeders to speak of, with only two receiving tickets.

Fortunately,

there were no traffic fatalities recorded in Fayette County during the

five-day holiday period that ended Sunday at midnight.

Traffic statistics

from activity over the holiday period were not available from neither

the Fayette County Sheriff's Department or the Fayetteville Police Department

The sheriff's

department is one of three law enforcement agencies in the state that

claims better than a 90 percent seatbelt usage rate from local motorists.

The week before Thanksgiving, Maj. Wayne Hannah received the department's

award for that achievement from the Governor's Office on Highway Safety.

Maj. Hannah

attributed the 92 percent seatbelt usage rate to heavy enforcement. He

particularly praised the support of Sheriff Randall Johnson, who believes

in enforcing Georgia's seatbelt laws.

Wednesday night

was a good example, as all but one of the department's 10 traffic units

were on the road for the evening shift.

A roadblock

was set up at the intersection of Corinth and Carter Roads. Quite a few

tickets were written for some of the 260 cars that went through.

One car had

five kids crunched shoulder-to-shoulder in the back seat. None were buckled

up although one of them, a 2-year-old should have been in a car seat.

The result

was two tickets for the driver, and two of the kids rode home in Lt. Brian

Woodie's patrol car.

"It's

all about saving these kids' lives," Woodie told the driver as he

prepared to write the ticket.

Johnson is

a big believer in the power of a seatbelt, which saved his life in a serious

crash in Charleston, S.C. back in 1991 as he and his wife went with friends

to watch their daughter Melissa play a basketball game.

Had Johnson

not been strapped in, he could have been thrown from the car like had

happened the week before to a woman in Fayette County who died from her

injuries.

"That

made a believer out of me," Johnson said. "I don't think I'd

be here to talk about it had I not had a seatbelt on."