Getting your kids in the car can be a nightmare, but that’s especially the case if your car seat is one that has a difficult to understand installation process, or doesn’t fit right in your vehicle. This is a problem a lot of people suffer from but it’s important to get right as incorrectly fitted child safety seats can cause major problems for the child and driver in the event of an accident or sudden braking.
Local councils around the UK have been trying to promote better car-seat installation and in North Somerset recently, they tested 182 seats of local parents and found that as many as 42 per cent of them all were installed incorrectly. 14 children were also found to be travelling without a seat at all!
These particular checks were carried out by local councillors and the local police in Weston-Super-Mare who charged drivers with fitting their seats properly before continuing the journey or they could face up to a £100 fixed penalty notice. This is because, as the 14 above parents clearly didn’t observe, it’s entirely illegal for children under 12 to travel without a booster seat of some kind. They have to be at least 12 years of age or of 135CM tall in order to be legally able to use a seat belt.
Avon and Somerset Police road safety officer, PC Dave Adams, said: “These days of action help to ensure children are travelling safely and also to raise awareness of the issue more generally Car seats that are incorrectly fitted can put children at risk of serious injury if they are involved in a collision,” he said (via BristolPost).
Checks like this are randomised in order to have the most impact, but it suggests that more care should be put into making sure car seats are correctly mounted.
Of course it’s not necessarily entirely the parents fault. It’s been acknowledged by many reviewers and organisations that child safety seats can be incredibly difficult to fit properly and if they need to be swapped regularly between cars, they become even more of a nightmare.
That’s why entities such as The Car Seat Lady are great, because they not only show you which are the better car seats out there, but also how to fit them, how to fix something should it go wrong and a whole host of other information. It recently teamed up with the US car hire firm Uber in order to distribute car seats to some of their hire vehicles. Car Seat Lady also provided on the job training for the services drivers, all of whom were required to learn how to install and remove the chairs from the car in a timely manner, so that if anyone is travelling anywhere with their young children, they can do so without having to worry about bringing their own car seat with them.
Source: Chippy 1920
