Seat Checks for Safety Week – June 2002
As part of Child Safety Week, RoSPA and Birmingham Trading Standards Department joined forces to offer free child car seat checks in car parks at different supermarkets around Birmingham.
Over half of the seats checked needed some adjustment. Usually this was simply pulling the seat belt through the child seat more tightly to hold the seat securely. Sometimes the seat belt was fed through the child seat incorrectly. One rearward facing baby seat was fitted forward facing and was only held very loosely by the seat belt.
In a handful of cases, a booster seat was being used by a child who was too small and young for it and who should still have been using a child seat. The main problem here was that the seat belt was resting over the child’s stomach and neck and face, and was usually very loose.
Buckle crunch (where the buckle rests against part of the child seat’s frame) is often found to be a common problem in these types of survey. However, in this one, it was very rare.
Around 10% of the seats checked were quite old, and these tended to be the worst fitted because they had no mechanism to lock the seat belt once it had been secured.
A small number of people had second-hand seats, which were usually in poor condition and rarely came with their instructions. One or two of these had been obtained from close family members and the owners were confident about their condition and history.
It was noticeable in the more deprived areas of Birmingham that a much higher proportion of parents who were observed to have children in their car, did not have a child seat and often the child was not even using a seat belt.
Many parents complained that their children had learned how to undo the child seat harness or slip it off their shoulder, and they were finding it impossible to stop them from doing this.
It was clear from the public response that many parents are nervous about their ability to fit their seats securely. Even those who had done so correctly were glad of the opportunity to have it confirmed. Few parents said that they had been shown how to fit the seat when they bought it, and many had not even been given verbal advice. Even more of a worry was the parents who had been assured by the shop that the seat they purchased would fit any car, but it obviously did not fit theirs.
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RoSPA is a registered charity: Registered Charity No: 207823 Patron: Her Majesty the Queen RoSPA Head Office: Edgbaston Park, 353 Bristol Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham B5 7ST, UK |
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