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With a trailer full of mounted African animals, Lou Poisson of Golden Gate gassed up his pickup at a local service station Friday and cleaned the splattered love bug carcasses from his windshield with a squeegee.

JAKOB SCHILLER / Daily News

Cpl. Jackson Gissendaner, left, an investigator with the Florida Highway Patrol, takes pictures of a Ford SUV that flipped over the guard rail near the 93 mile marker on east-bound I-75 on Friday morning. Behind him the dead body of one of the passengers is taken away. Two other passengers were also injured in the accident according to the Highway Patrol. One passenger was air lifted to to Lee Memorial Hospital in Ft. Meyers and the other was taken to North Collier Hospital. Highway patrol officers said according to witnesses and their investigation, the SUV drifted into the center median while heading east and then overcorrected, causing the vehicle to flip over the guard rail and roll into the canal.

After getting gas, Poisson, the manager of a local taxidermy shop, said he was going to pick up his wife, Chris, and the two were driving north to deliver the stuffed animals to a Georgia safari hunter. It will be a long drive on one of the deadliest holidays of the year on the road.

Poisson said he was going to take precautions, including wearing his seat belt on the trip. If he didn’t, he said, his wife would let him have it.

“I don’t want a ticket,” Poisson said. “And like I said, the wife will be nagging me about it. And it does save lives.”

Law enforcement officers in Southwest Florida and around the nation will be out in full force during the Memorial Day weekend targeting drivers and passengers who aren’t wearing their seat belts. The increased attention to seat belt usage is part of the 2007 “Click it or Ticket” campaign, which runs from May 21 to June 3.

Law enforcement officials in Lee and Collier counties said they are showing zero tolerance this holiday weekend for drivers and passengers who forget to buckle up.

“If you are stopped in the city of Fort Myers and you are not wearing a seat belt, you will get a ticket,” said Capt. Phil Shevlin of the Fort Myers Police Department.

At a Click it or Ticket kickoff event at Hammond Stadium in Lee County on Thursday morning, authorities erected 32 tombstones, one for each of the 32 people killed in traffic crashes in Florida during the three-day Memorial Day weekend last year. Of those, 66 percent weren’t wearing a seat belt at the time of the crash, authorities said.

Nationwide, Memorial Day weekend is deadlier than New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July, the Naples police department reported. Besides being a long weekend, it’s also the end of the school year, college students are moving home and families are going on vacation, Naples police Sgt. Kyle Clark said.

“There is more traveling going on,” Clark said. “When you have more cars on the road you’re going to have more crashes.”

Seat belt usage in Florida was at an all-time high of 80.7 percent in 2006, the Florida Department of Transportation reported. Seat belt usage rates measured highest in the southern region of the state, and Collier County had the highest rate with 88.2 percent compliance, DOT reported.

JAKOB SCHILLER / Daily News

East-bound traffic on I-75 waits to get by an accident scene near the 93 mile marker on Friday morning around 9 a.m. The accident happened when an SUV drifted into the center median, overcorrected and then flipped over the guard rail on the shoulder and landed in a nearby canal. There was one fatality and two injured passengers according to the Florida Highway Patrol.

Still, nearly four million Floridians aren’t buckling up when they drive, authorities said. On Friday morning, one person was killed on Interstate 75 when a sport utility vehicle overturned near the 93 mile marker of Alligator Alley.

The person who was killed wasn’t wearing a seat belt and was thrown from the SUV, the Collier County Sheriff’s Office reported.

“When you wear a seat belt in the front of the car, you can reduce the risk of fatality by 45 percent,” said Sgt. Chris Gonzalez of the Collier County Sheriff’s Office. “That’s huge.”

In Florida, seat belt violations are secondary offenses, meaning drivers have to be pulled over for another offense, like speeding or red light running, Gonzalez said.

Law enforcement officers aren’t trying to trick anyone, Gonzalez said. The Sheriff’s Office recently purchased 4-by-8 banners with messages such as “Seat belt enforcement ahead” and “Speed enforcement ahead” that deputies are installing over the weekend.

The banners recently were used near an unidentified Collier County middle school while parents were picking up children, Gonzalez said. Despite the banners, deputies still issued 20 tickets that afternoon, he said.

“Our goal is not to issue citations,” Gonzalez said. “Our goal is compliance. ... You comply, we won’t issue tickets, and we’re all happy.”

Law enforcement agencies in Southwest Florida also are on the lookout for speeders and drivers who are under the influence of drugs or alcohol this weekend. They all said they would have extra patrols on the road for Memorial Day weekend.

The Lee County Sheriff’s Office will be using wolf packs, check points and saturation patrols to target areas based on complaints and history, sheriff’s Lt. Robert Forrest said.

“We’re constantly rotating,” he said. “It’s an endless effort.”

The Florida Highway Patrol is redirecting staff that normally is assigned to administrative duties to road patrol during the weekend, patrol Lt. Doug Dodson said.

Darrell Poser of East Naples said he wears his seat belt on the highway, but not when he’s driving in the city. He said believes law enforcement would be better off targeting drunken drivers and speeders.

“There’s more important things for them to do,” he said.

Dodson disagreed. Crashes happen in a fraction of a second, he said, and seat belts have been proven to save lives.

“I’ve had to do the next-of-kin notification,” Dodson said. “It’s not fun. It’s sad. Your family members will always be ... wondering whether you would have lived if you had worn a seat belt.”