2004 WAS AN outstanding year for seat belt use across the nation. The percentage of people buckling up soared to 80 percent — the highest in history. Arizona and Hawaii broke the 95 percent barrier. Lives were saved. Injuries were prevented. The number and severity of wrecks were reduced.

But not in South Carolina.

In South Carolina, the percentage of people wearing seat belts plummeted 26 percent, to just under two-thirds. That was the sharpest decline in the nation, and nearly double the next-worse state. It erased all the progress we had made through innovative public awareness campaigns since 1999, and dropped our usage rate into a near-tie for the nation’s worst.

More significantly, since seat belts increase your chance of surviving a wreck by 50 percent, it cost lives.

So while Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta was able to announce that, on a national level, “It’s no coincidence that as safety belt use reaches record levels that we are seeing record low fatality rates,” the picture was just the opposite here in South Carolina: Our decline was accompanied by what is expected to be one of the few increases in the nation in the number of highway deaths. As of Dec. 29, 1,017 people had already died on S.C. highways, more than all of 2003 and 6 percent ahead of the same time last year. This probably won’t be our worst year ever. But if something isn’t done, we’ll have that before long.

South Carolina has long been among the nation’s slackers at buckling up, in large part because our legislators refuse to let police enforce the state’s mandatory seat belt law. When police are allowed to enforce such laws, seat belt use goes up by 10 to 15 percentage points. But here, lawmakers insist that police catch drivers breaking some other law before they can cite them for violating this law. That’s like saying police can’t arrest you for speeding unless you run a red light.

This isn’t new, so it’s impossible to say for sure what made our seat belt use decline this year.

But we know that in 2004, highway safety advocates waged their most aggressive, most visible campaign yet to strengthen the law. And opponents were more vocal and visible than they’ve ever been in defending the God-given right of South Carolinians to go flying unencumbered through their windshields and force the rest of us to pick up the bill.

We also know that a big reason real seat belt laws work is that they send a message to the overwhelming majority of people, who want to be responsible and obey the law, that this is what is expected of them.

So doesn’t it stand to reason that people would also get a pretty strong message when some of the state’s most powerful politicians wage such a determined campaign to defeat such a law? Doesn’t this remind people that there’s practically no chance they will be ticketed if they break the law? Doesn’t it assure them that the state isn’t serious about the law? Doesn’t it tell them, even more clearly than they’ve already been told, that nobody really expects them to buckle up?

Today we begin a new year. Let us resolve to make this the year we change the message from one that kills to one that saves lives. Let us resolve to make this the year we refuse to be bullied by a handful of legislators whose extremist notion of “personal rights” flies in the face of commonsense definitions, rejects the concept of public responsibility and ignores the obligation of any government to promote public safety.