Buckle up and watch your speed; there will be more people watching you on the roadways Thursday.

The Story County Sheriff’s Office will be working a traffic safety enforcement project Thursday. Officers will be focusing on traffic violations along U.S. Highway 30.

“It’s an effort to bring more awareness and help bring more safety to Iowa roads,” said Lt. Dru Toresdahl.

Toresdahl said the sheriff’s office would use more manpower to enforce traffic safety along the highway on this project.

“We’ll be running on average about four extra cars, specifically to work this project,” Toresdahl said.

“We’re also working a joint effort with other law enforcement agencies – the Nevada Police Department and Ames Police Department will also have a couple of extra cars out.”

The traffic safety enforcement project is an annual project and goes all day long, starting at 6 a.m.

“It’s not our goal to increase citations. It’s our goal to educate the public on seat belt use, child restraints and speeding,” said Nevada Police Chief Michael Tupper.

Law enforcement agencies will target seat belt use, stop sign and stop light violations, impaired driving, driving without a license and speeding.

“We find that when we do these projects we tend to not only write tickets, but we also seem to make a lot of arrests out of it, because of people out there driving that are under suspension or warrants that are valid for them,” Toresdahl said.

From border to border, Iowa law enforcement will be cracking down on traffic laws on U.S. Highway 30 and U.S. Highway 20. Toresdahl said laser radars will be used for speeding vehicles.

“My personal opinion is when they increased the speed limit on I-35, I think people coming off of 35 just don’t slow down,” Toresdahl said.

Tupper said in Nevada, U.S. Highway 30 is so close to the interstate that drivers continue to drive at the interstate speed limit.

The speed limit is 65 mph on U.S. Highway 30 and 70 mph on Interstate 35.

“In the last year, we’ve had seven fatalities on Highway 30, and we would really like to drop that down,” Toresdahl said.

Another goal of this project is to raise Iowa’s seat belt use rate. The current rate in Iowa is 90 percent.

“We do want to get our compliance rate up,” Toresdahl said. “Ninety-five percent would be great. The state of Iowa, especially through the Governor’s Traffic Safety Bureau, does an excellent job of making people aware and putting out special programs to help gain that compliance.”

Tupper said Nevada has a 86 percent seat belt compliance rate.

“When I got here three years ago, our compliance rate was 66 percent,” Tupper said.

Toresdahl said he expects a substantial increase in tickets to be given out Thursday, mainly because of the increased presence of officers on patrol.

“Normally the sheriff’s office in a month’s time runs about 150 to 190 speed tickets. Seat belt tickets, we usually run 40 a month,” Toresdahl said.