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Last week’s online forum which focused on child car seats and in-car safety generated 10 questions which were comprehensively answered by three experts on the subject.
The forum was jointly hosted by Kat Furlong from Good Egg Safety and Julie Dagnall and Claire Waterhouse from Child Seat Safety, who answered a wide range of questions submitted by road safety professionals, parents, grandparents and others interested in this important safety issue.
This was Road Safety GB’s second online forum, following the success of the motorcycle forum in October.
A similar forum on the subject of children in cars took place during Global Road Safety Week earlier this year but concerns about car seat safety have been heightened in recent weeks.
A BBC Watchdog programme aired on 8 October revealed that out of 50 retail stores visited, only one managed to correctly fit its own brand child car seat; while results from just under 3,000 child car seat checks carried out by Good Egg Safety in 2015 showed that 71% of the seats were either fitted incorrectly or incompatible.
Kat Furlong is Good Egg Safety’s project manager, responsible for overseeing thousands of child car seat checks every year. She has featured on Good Morning Britain, writes regularly for Emma’s Diary and regularly undertakes Q&A sessions on behalf of leading manufacturers Britax, Maxi Cosi and Cosatto. She is recognised as one of the UK’s leading experts in in-car child safety and delivers CPD accredited expert in-car safety training in partnership with TRL.
Julie Dagnall and Claire Waterhouse are acknowledged experts in the field of child in-car safety. Both enjoyed long careers as local authority road safety officers before setting up Child Seat Safety in 2011. The pair were specialist advisors to the BBC Watchdog programme.
I must confess to being rather surprised at the evident ’23’ people who appear to disagree with the comments made by our Good Egg Safety Manager, Kat Furlong in relation to either 1) that leading retailers are now taking advantage of the excellent new CPD accredited expert training we jointly deliver with our friends at TRL or 2) the fact we offer free advice sheets to help empower parents and carers.
I’d greatly welcome further clarification and debate regarding what is so contentious about either of these? Looking forward to hearing more…..
Jan James CEO Good Egg Safety
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Our work with the WatchDog programme really highlighted the issues here, they are supporting Child Seat Safety in their #letsgetserious campaign which is encouraging retailers to see child restraints as a safety item rather than a nursery product, all retailers mentioned in the programme are revisiting their training programmes and looking at ensuring staff selling restraints have an independent qualification such as the IOSH Child Seat Safety Awareness Course run by Child Seat Safety. If parents want to ensure they are getting correct advice then we would suggest you direct them to our web site http://www.childseatsafety.co.uk where there is a find an advisor page, all the people on here have undertaken the accreditation course and hold a current qualification with us. Or they can contact us directly for help and advice.
Claire Waterhouse, Child Seat Safety
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Thank you for your enquiry Ted and, in the light of our mystery shop findings and the subsequent Watchdog results, it is an understandable one.
In answer, we would still recommend that parents use the services of retailers because it gives them the opportunity to check both their child fits the seat AND the seat fits the car.
We are now working closely with several leading retailers who are investing even more in training their staff because they genuinely want to offer the best advice to their customers.
In the meantime, we would encourage parents to print off our FREE Good Egg Safety Retailer Guide (http://www.goodeggcarsafety.com/ukincar/incar/buying_guide/) which will show them exactly what retailers should ask you prior to selling you a car seat.
If you’d like any further information please don’t hesitate to contact me on kat@goodeggsafety.com
Kat Furlong, Good Egg Safety
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This may come out in the forum, but what is being done to raise the standards with child car seat retailers fitting car seats correctly? What are the alternatives, apart from promoting independent / specialist retailers who performed better? Parents who often feel overwhelmed with this subject, may now find themselves losing confidence in retailers. In that case this might cause parents to not ask for help, fitting advice or start buying online, which is not what we want. Car seat clinics are a good way of helping parents, but we are not in a position to offer them year round.
Ted Booker
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