Road safety and fire and rescue officers from Norfolk checked more than 1,600 child car seats during a four-week summer tour of the county.
Norfolk County Council’s road safety team, alongside colleagues from Norfolk Fire and Rescue, checked a record 1,645 seats during their 2018 tour – compared to 1,468 during 2017.
629 faults were identified during the checks, 92% of which were able to be fixed on the spot. The 38% fault rate in 2018 is slightly lower than in 2017.
Victoria Horne, mother of nine-month-old Daisy, had her child seat checked while the team were in Norwich. She said: “I was really happy with our check yesterday, a big thank you to the team! It’s great having the extra piece of mind that Daisy’s safe when I’m driving.”
Margaret Dewsbury, chair of the Communities Committee, Norfolk County Council, said: “It’s been a fantastic tour this year with huge demand from parents and grandparents.
“It’s a really good example of collaborative working between Norfolk County Council’s road safety team and Norfolk Fire and Rescue, who have been advising on child seats of all types and for all ages of children.”
Don’t really get your last para/question Nick – can you elaborate please? If it’s any help, my interventions were only centred around preventing the collision in the first place, not minimising the effects thereof.
My first comment was trying to highlight the fact that the emphasis and focus of some road safety interventions are sometimes out of proportion to their actual importance – if child safety seats are worthy of an intervention on their own, then so must be the other items I mentioned, but never are. Is it because checking car safety seats is relatively easy to do and enables a box to be ticked?
Hugh Jones
--12
As I have suggested previously, Road Safety problems are caused by many factors and solved by a variety of interventions.
Reducing casualties can be achieved by avoiding the collision in the first place (my favourite) or by mitigating the effects of the collision (also worthwhile in my opinion)
I do not have faith in a human’s ability, capacity or desire to learn everything during an intervention aimed at addressing every factor so I assume we need to have several interventions all designed to be as efficient as possible in addressing the chosen factor.
From your comment Hugh, I presume (dangerous to do so I know) that you have, or had, no problem with spending time and effort getting people to use seatbelts or enforcing the lack of wearing one when required? When did a seatbelt or an airbag ever prevent a collision from happening?
Nick Hughes, Preston
+7
Having a child in a properly fitted child seat does not protect them from death and injury I’m afraid. On the other hand, not crashing in the first place does. I see too many mothers driving recklessly and carelessly putting their off-spring at risk, to the extent that having a correctly fitted would be academic.
I am one of those (or used to be before retirement) that Martin something appears to support i.e. ‘out in the community, engaging with the public’, only I got my priorities right.
Hugh Jones
--15
It seems there are two sorts of people working for a safer future…
Those who go out into the community, engage the public in conversation and show how they can make themselves and their friends and family safer.
Others sit behind a computer keyboard and moan about things.
I know who I prefer to support.
Nice one Norfolk!
Martin A, Ipswich
+14
Let’s not forget also air bags, seat belts, brake efficiency, vehicle integrity etc.etc. – in fact let’s not have a collision in the first place.
As the parents were presumably in attendance, the time could perhaps have been better spent assessing the parent’s’ propensity to crash and educating them.
Hugh Jones
--16