CHILD SAFETY AWARENESS This campaign hopes to drive home the message on the importance of using child seats

By Derryn Wong

ON 30th APRIL 2008, the safety campaign ‘Child Seats Save Little Lives’ organised by Thomson Medical Centre and co-organised with the Singapore Traffic Police and Volvo Cars was launched.

It aims to educate the public on the importance of using the proper child restraints while youngsters are travelling in an automobile. Children are especially vulnerable during automobile accidents because of a variety of factors.

This includes their large head mass in proportion to the rest of their body, the underdeveloped nature of the skeleton and the fact that adult-sized seatbelts simply cannot safely restrain a child in the case of an accident.

According to studies done by Volvo, using a forward-facing child seat or booster cushion provides 80 percent better protection, while a rearward facing seat provides an impressive 90 percent better protection.

In Singapore, fatalities involving children in automobiles aren’t a major problem as there was one recorded fatality in 2006 and none in 2007. Traffic Police also issued around 4000 summons last year related to improper restraints although only about 30 of them were child-restraint related.

That is only one side of the picture though, as the total number of people injured or killed in accidents went up from 9,896 to 10,561 in 2006 to 2007. Recently there has also been a growing push for legislation regarding seatbelts for children in schoolbuses after the death of eight-year-old Russell Koh in a minibus accident.

Commander of the Traffic Police, Christopher Ng said, “Hopefully with initiatives like this, parents will do the responsible thing and help spread the message. The number of offences related to unrestrained children in vehicles has remained low but for sure we will continue with our enforcement.”

The ‘Child Seats Save Little Lives’ programme itself was initiated by expatriate safety activist and housewife Susie Lawson. She noticed a large number of parents who failed to use child restraints when leaving Thomson Medical Centre, which delivers about 8,000 babies a year.

She then wrote a letter to the centre, which approached the Traffic Police and the decision to launch a full-scale programme took root. See our 100th issue special for tips on how to get your kids into a car seat for advice from Susie.

The campaign will run for five months, and be visible on buses, lamp post banners, flyers at various locations islandwide, including all major hospitals.