According to Maryland Law, Who Must Wear a Seat Belt?

Maryland’s seat belt law requires the driver and every passenger to be buckled up, with children restrained according to their age, height, and weight. The fine runs up to $50 per unbelted person, no points are added to your license, and a separate statute governs child safety seats. The rules differ in one important way by seating position: front-seat violations can get you pulled over on their own, while rear-seat violations can only be ticketed if the officer has already stopped the car for something else.

Who Has To Wear a Seat Belt

Under Maryland Transportation Code Section 22-412.3, a driver cannot operate a vehicle unless the driver and every occupant under 16 is buckled or properly secured in a child safety seat.¹ For passengers 16 and older, the rule depends on where they’re sitting.

Front-seat passengers must wear a seat belt at all times. Police can stop a vehicle solely for a front-seat belt violation, which makes it a primary enforcement offense.

Rear-seat passengers 16 and older must also wear a seat belt, but the officer can only issue a citation if the vehicle has already been stopped for a separate traffic violation. If you’re riding unbuckled in the back and the driver has done nothing else wrong, the officer cannot pull the car over for that reason alone. If the driver rolls through a stop sign, though, the rear-seat ticket becomes fair game.¹

The driver carries extra responsibility for younger occupants. If anyone under 16 is unrestrained, the citation goes to the driver, not the child.

Child Safety Seat Rules by Age

Maryland’s child passenger safety law, Section 22-412.2, sets age-specific restraint requirements.²

Children under 2 must ride in a rear-facing child safety seat until they exceed the manufacturer’s height or weight limit for the seat. A first-time violation for having a child under 2 in a forward-facing seat is a written warning rather than a fine.
Children under 8 who are shorter than 4 feet 9 inches must be secured in a child safety seat, which includes booster seats, following the seat and vehicle manufacturers’ instructions. Once a child reaches 4’9″, the child safety seat requirement no longer applies regardless of age.
Children ages 8 through 15 must be secured in either a child safety seat or a regular seat belt.

The fine for a child safety seat violation is $50, the same as an adult belt violation. A judge can waive the fine if you did not own a child safety seat at the time of the violation, bought one before your court date, and bring proof of purchase to the hearing.²

What a Ticket Actually Costs

A seat belt conviction carries a fine of up to $50 per person.¹ With court costs added, the total comes to roughly $83. Each unrestrained person counts as a separate violation, so a car full of unbuckled passengers can produce several tickets at once.

Here is the detail that matters most. A seat belt violation is explicitly not a moving violation under Maryland law, so no points are added to your driving record.¹ The Motor Vehicle Administration’s point system applies only to moving violations, so a seat belt ticket by itself should not trigger a warning letter, a driver improvement program, or a license suspension.

Because no points are assessed, a single ticket is unlikely to directly raise your insurance rate. Insurers mainly look at moving violations and at-fault accidents. Multiple non-moving violations can still get an underwriter’s attention, so the fine is not always the last word.

Exceptions to the Seat Belt Requirement

Maryland recognizes a narrow set of exemptions.¹

Medical exemptions apply if a physician licensed in Maryland certifies in writing that wearing a seat belt would be inappropriate because of a physical disability or other medical condition. Keep the written certification in the vehicle.
Historic vehicles are excluded because the statute’s definition of “motor vehicle” leaves out Class L vehicles. Owning an old car is not enough on its own; the vehicle has to be registered under Maryland’s Class L historic designation, which comes with its own limits on daily use.
U.S. Postal Service employees and contract carriers delivering mail on local box routes are exempt while actively making deliveries.

Seat Belts and Injury Claims

Maryland follows a contributory negligence rule, meaning that if you bear even a small share of fault for your own injuries, you can be completely barred from recovering compensation. Only a handful of states still apply this rule.³

You might expect that going unbuckled in a contributory negligence state would wreck an injury claim. The Maryland legislature addressed this directly. Under Section 22-412.3(h), the failure to wear a seat belt cannot be used as evidence of contributory negligence in court.¹ A defense attorney cannot bring in the fact that you were unbuckled to argue you caused or worsened your injuries.

So if another driver causes a crash and you weren’t wearing your seat belt, that fact alone cannot be used to defeat your personal injury claim in Maryland. Most people don’t know this, and insurers rarely volunteer it.

Commercial Drivers

Driving a commercial motor vehicle through Maryland adds a federal layer on top of the state rule. Under 49 CFR 392.16, a commercial vehicle driver must wear the seat belt whenever the vehicle has one installed, and all passengers in property-carrying commercial vehicles must be buckled.⁴ A federal violation can bring fines and CSA points that affect a carrier’s safety rating, consequences that go well beyond the $50 state ticket.

1
Maryland General Assembly. Maryland Transportation Code Section 22-412.3 – Mandatory Seat Belt Use
2
Maryland General Assembly. Maryland Transportation Code Section 22-412.2 – Child Safety Seat and Seat Belt Requirements for Children
3
Justia. Comparative and Contributory Negligence Laws: 50-State Survey
4
eCFR. 49 CFR 392.16 – Use of Seat Belts