A shocking new television advertising campaign designed to get drivers and passengers to wear seatbelts was launched in Bedfordshire on Monday.

The latest Think! always wear a seatbelt campaign, graphically illustrates the damage done to internal organs of car crash victims not wearing a seatbelt.

Jim Fitzpatrick, road safety minister, said: "If you have a car crash without wearing a seatbelt you actually experience three crashes, even at everyday speeds like 30mph.

"First your car crashes and stops. Second, because there's nothing to stop you moving, your body carries on and hits the inside of the car.

"Third, you stop, but your internal organs keep moving, hitting the inside of your body and tearing under the force of the impact."

Between 2005 and 2007, 21 people who were not wearing seatbelts were killed in car crashes in Bedfordshire, which represents more than 40 per cent of the total number of people killed on the county's roads.

Stewart Lloyd, an A&E consultant at Bedford Hospital South Wing, said: "Often the difference between someone who has been in a crash and was wearing a seatbelt and someone who was not, is we can save people who were wearing a seatbelt, where as without we cannot because of internal injuries.

"You can be thrown from the car and if you're ejected from a vehicle your chances of dying significantly increase.

"Wearing a seatbelt is as important as not drinking and driving and not speeding."

The new £2.6million campaign comes after research which has shown 353 lives could be saved a year if people wore seatbelts all the time and that only 69 per cent of adult back seat passengers wear seatbelts.

Gary Sanderson, spokesman for the East of England Ambulance Service, said: "It takes a few seconds to put on a seatbelt, which will save your life.

"Yet ambulance staff can see injuries from not wearing a seatbelt on a daily basis and it's normally young people."

PC Mike Shechan and PC Chris Cave from Bedfordshire Police's road safety enforcement team stopped a number of drivers who were not wearing their seatbelts in Ampthill Road,Bedford, on Monday morning.

Anyone caught by police not wearing a seatbelt will receive a £30 fine.

PC Shechan said on average one police traffic unit can issue 15 tickets a day to motorists not wearing a seatbelt.

The new advert is so realistic and hard-hitting it can only be shown on television after the 9pm watershed. An edited version will be shown earlier, describing, but not showing the damage to internal organs.