Good Egg Seat Safety Campaign launches to save lives across the UK by highlighting the common faults which effect child safety in cars.
Good Egg Safety has launched a new national initiative which is supported by the biggest public / private sector partnership ever - to raise awareness of common fitting errors and how to rectify them to improve in-car child safety. The campaign demonstrates ‘common faults’ found from almost 11,000 child car seat checks and a video has been recorded to demonstrate how easy it is to rectify these. These can be found on the campaign site https://www.goodeggcarsafety.com//. Common mistakes include loose or twisted harnesses, padded clothing, buckle crunch (where the adult belt rests on the child seat and can shatter on impact) and incorrect seat belt routing.
The Good Egg Team have been filming with Good Morning Britain where as many as 80% of seats were found to be incorrectly fitted. While the Good Egg average is 54% failure rate (from almost 11,000 checks between 2010 and 2013) it shows the wide swings in poor fitting prevalent across the Country.
To help address the problem, branches of Mothercare and Halfords, offered free safety checks on child car seats, including seats not purchased from them, between Monday 23 June and Sunday 30 June. Along with Mamas & Papas, free copies of Good Egg’s In-Car Safety Guides are offered to their customers. Free additional Good Egg car seat checking events will be taking place nationwide throughout the summer. See https://www.goodeggcarsafety.com/ for details.
Car seat checking events in The Highland Council area will take place on Tuesday 5 August at Inshes Tesco from 11am – 4pm and on 6 August 11am-4pm at Morrisons supermarket in Fort William.
Jan James, Chief Executive of Good Egg Safety, said today: “In these times of austerity, parents handing down child seats to younger siblings and loaning from friends is perfectly understandable. However unlike cots, prams and pushchairs, using a second-hand child safety seat means you could be putting your child in danger. To be safe, the seat has to be the right seat for your child’s height and weight, the right seat for your make and model of vehicle, and should be correctly fitted. If you don’t know that the seat your child is sitting in is safe, then you have over a 50% chance that it isn’t.
“We conduct free safety seat clinics up and down the country, and our research suggests that an alarming 54% of seats are now dangerously fitted, or simply the wrong seat for the car and the child. What’s worse, the figures are going up, not coming down.
“Thanks to a huge amount of help from our valued partners and sponsors, this is our biggest campaign ever. We want to get those figures going in the other direction. Our aim this year is to see a 10% reduction in incorrect fitting. Of course, we want every child to be sitting safely, and 10% is just a start, just to get us to the place where most seats are safe, as opposed to currently where most seats are dangerous.
The campaign, run in partnership with Good Morning Britain, is also backed by Road Safety Scotland, Arnold Clark Group, Maxi-Cosi, Mamas & Papas, Which?, NCT, Road Safety GB, TRL, Brake, RoSPA and Road Safe. The campaign will run until November with Good Egg free child seat clinics run nationwide.
Sir Arnold Clark, Chairman and Chief Executive, “As a parent, grandfather and great-grandfather, I am passionate about the safety of children on our roads. The Good Egg campaign raises awareness of incorrectly fitted car seats and reassures, whilst guiding, parents on life saving changes they can make for their family. We are delighted to be working on such an extremely important initiative.”
Amanda Scacchetti, for Mamas & Papas added: “Being Product Development Director at Mamas & Papas is a big responsibility and so is being a parent. I need to know my little ones are as safe possible every minute of the day. After all the statistics are truly frightening. That's why we have teamed up with Good Egg Safety and completely redesigned our car seat collection, handpicking the very safest products, with the best innovations from superior side impact protection to extended rear facing which is 80% safer in the early years. So whether you want advice on which car seat is right for your family or to check that you're still doing everything right a few years on, just drop by to one of our stores and speak to one of our car seat experts."
Michael McDonnell, Director of Road Safety Scotland commented: "Although we find some seats that are totally unsuitable for the child or the car in which it is being used, the majority of faults can be rectified fairly simply and will take only an extra few seconds of your time. They may seem relatively unimportant when you're in a hurry, but those few seconds could save your child's life five minutes down the road. So, my advice would be, don't risk it, you've too much to lose."
Adrian Walsh, Director Roadsafe added: “This campaign highlights a most important issue for parents and grandparents too. I am sure that all would agree that a few minutes double checking the fit of a child seat and a few more ensuring that the child is properly belted up is well worth it.”
ENDS