Respect to cops when being pulled over has saved me from tickets a few times as well. I generally don't get pulled over though, guess I'm also lucky but when driving I watch the road like a hawk all the time partly for cops but mostly for inattentive dumbasses.
Seat belt laws seem like BS, maybe they are but the way I see it, somebody not wearing theirs and getting ejected from their car could become a missile that injures somebody else. Also it's more mess for the responders to clean up and keeps the road closed for longer when someone is ejected from their car in a crash and becomes a bloody pile of meat.