Children not wearing seatbelts

[keith baldock]

Has anyone else – or their SCPs/Child Ped or Bikeability trainers – reported that children in cars around primary schools etc are not wearing seatbelts much post Covid? Our lot are thus thinking of a campaign. Idea is to put laminated/plasticsied height charts around entrance to schools so students and parents can check – with more resources in school. Comments/ideas other activities welcome. Many thanks

[Joanne Bassett]

Hi Keith,
No we haven’t got anything at the moment. I have noticed this though.
Little children in the front seat or stood up on the back seat.
It’s quite worrying.
Be interested to see what you do.

Thanks

Joanne

[Darren Dowd]

Hi,

I haven’t noticed this or been told it’s happening here.
I agree a campaign or reminder to parents would be useful – though I thought it was a legal requirement for all car occupants to wear a seatbelt and height simply determined whether a child-seat/restraint or regular seatbelt was used? Is this not right?

D

[Rebecca James]

We often see children (and adults) unrestrained in vehicles in Bradford. We have resources that we distrubute to schools who can then pass it on to parents. We also sometimes attend children’s centres/ parents groups/ stay and play sessions etc. It seems to be an ongoing battle and we don’t seem to be having much of an impact it has to be said. Using seat belts and child restraints are covered in our hall based road safety sessions. From time to time we also do more general campaigns targeted towards adults reminding them to wear seat belts. With regards to the idea of height charts. We used to go into schools with health visitors and measure childrens’ height (and weight) to provide information on the type of child restraint that they should be using but we don’t have the capacity for this any more. I agree with the comment above. A height chart outside school might be a useful reference, but if they’re not even using the standard car seat belt are they then likely to use a child seat if required? Or is it that they are using seat belts but not child restraints when they should be?

[Stuart Mottershaw]

In Leicestershire we have some height charts that we give away on Fatal4 operations when we identify vehicles with missing/incorrect/poorly fitted child seats.

The height charts are great and list which seat is required for each height and weight of the child making the minefield easier for parents to understand.

I’m not sure where we get them from but if anyone is interested drop me an email and I’ll find out.

stuart.mottershaw1@leics.police.uk

[keith baldock]

Many thanks. Doing this mainly as response to concerned SCPs and trainers working at schools – we don’t see casualties attributed to this. Urban environment less likely although did use DIMMS family demo sled at Safety in Action and other events to show even at 30 significant impact.
I am going ahead with trial at 6 schools where our SCPs / trainers will be working in New Year – will try and do a little evaluation. I’ve got plasticised height charts from Room 9 media – the basics – but if it works will look to use redesign to add more info onto it ref services and risks.

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