34% of child car seats checked as part of an August initiative by Norfolk County Council’s road safety team have failed to meet the required safety standards.
With the support of Norfolk Fire and Rescue, 1,131 child car seats were checked at 19 events across the county.
366 of the incorrectly fitted seats were fixed on the spot, while 24 had faults that were unable to be fixed. Those parents were given guidance as to what to do next to resolve the problem.
Iain Temperton, who heads up Norfolk’s road safety team, says more work needs to be done across the county to raise awareness of the problem.
The figure is, however, much lower than that in safety checks carried out by Good Egg Safety in 2015, when 71% of seats were found to be incorrectly fitted.
Iain Temperton said: “The 34% fail rate is about the norm these days (in Norfolk); what that does mean is that one in three child seats in Norfolk could be fitted more safely, so we still have lots of work to do.
“Sadly there were some parents who declined the offer of a child seat check, even though it is free and only takes a few moments – as well as one or two cases of no child seats being used at all.”
The road safety team is organising one more event on 31 August in Norwich – full details can be found on the Norfolk road safety team’s Facebook page.
This is something we in Hull have been pushing for a while now, a clinic every month Feb-Nov. It’s often difficult to justify campaigns if you look at accident stats but this is an area where you need to question that logic. Colleagues in the emergency services readily admit that in an accident kids are cut out of their seats without delay, so any evidence of a faulty seat is lost forever. A couple of years back I caught a glimpse of A&E data (think by fluke!) which showed admissions for kids showing injuries consistent with car crashes were rising fast. Doesn’t take a genius to put the pieces together. The other bonus of this sort of campaign is you can get multiple messages across at the same time so cost per intervention can fall dramatically. We also work closely with Good Egg who are fantastic partners in this area, which is what is needed when the fail rate hovers around 78% in the City.
Allan Robins, Hull City Council Road Safety
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Excellent work by our Norfolk colleagues!
David, Suffolk
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