WASHINGTON — Seat-belt use in the U.S. has reached a record 82 percent this year, an increase of 2 percentage points from last year, the Transportation Department said yesterday, crediting higher awareness of safety benefits and the possibility of being ticketed by police.

The compliance rate helped highway fatalities drop to the lowest rate since record keeping began 30 years ago, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said. He estimated seat belts annually save 16,000 lives, prevent hundreds of thousands of injuries and save the economy $67 billion. A decade ago, just six in 10 drivers wore seat belts.

"The fact that safety belts save lives is starting to click with the American people," Mineta told a Mothers Against Drunk Driving convention in Washington, where he announced the latest figures. Drunken-driving fatalities also fell for the second straight year, he said.

In 2004, more than 42,000 Americans died of injuries related to traffic accidents.

Seat-belt compliance was highest in the 22 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico that have passed laws permitting police to pull drivers over simply for not wearing a seat belt, Mineta said.

The recently passed federal transportation bill includes $500 million in incentives to states to pass tougher seat-belt laws and/or to attain compliance of 85 percent or higher.

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.