South Carolina will have to do more than enforce its tough new seat belt law if it expects to significantly bring down the state's horrendous traffic fatality rate - one of the worst in the nation.

The new seat belt law allows officers to stop and ticket vehicles whose driver or passengers aren't buckled up. Previously seat belt tickets couldn't be issued unless a vehicle was stopped for some other violation.

This may be helpful in some cases, but it's not enough to appreciably affect the thousands-plus deaths that have been occurring on Palmetto State roads in recent years, including this year already. That equates to one fatal crash every 9.3 hours - second only to Mississippi in traffic fatality rates among the nine Southeastern states, and eighth in the nation.

The problem in large part is the terribly sorry shape the state's well-traveled secondary roads are in. "They're very unforgiving," accounting for more than 35 percent of fatal wrecks, says Public Safety Department spokesman Sid Gaulden,

So far this year, more than 20 people have died on Aiken County roads, 10th among the state's 46 counties.

Many rural roads have no shoulders, and are flanked by trees, mailboxes and ditches - and then there is the further menace of deer crossings.

There are two ways to deal with this.

The first, according to Gaulden, is for drivers to pay closer attention to what they're doing on these roads. Inattention causes many accidents.

Second, of course, is improving the roads - making them safer and easier to drive on. The state Department of Transportation says that simply widening road shoulders can cut traffic deaths by 22 percent. Clearing trees from the side of the road, patching potholes and paving thoroughfares also reduces fatalities.

Even so, notes the DOT, secondary routes are the most underfunded roads in the state. State Sen. Greg Ryberg, R-Aiken, says that's because in recent years the state's been spending its money on "major capital projects, probably at the expense of secondary roads."

The way to deal with that, says Ryberg, is not to raise gasoline taxes, as some suggest, but to reorder the state's priorities in light of the $200 million surplus that was left over from last year's budget.

Much of that money will be needed to pay off debts to improve the state's credit rating, but there should still be up to $100 million available to spend on the too-long-neglected secondary roads.