New Bedford Guide Your Guide to New Bedford and South Coast, MA
Buckling up is important for everybody, especially children, but more than 75 percent of child seats are not installed correctly. To keep kids safe and raise awareness for common child and booster seat errors, a free child passenger safety seat checkup is scheduled for Saturday, July 18, 2015 from 10 am until 2 pm at State Police General Headquarters located at 470 Worcester Road in Framingham. Nationally certified child passenger safety technicians will be on hand to inspect and properly install child safety seats.
Motor vehicle crashes are one of the leading causes of death among children ages 3 to 14 in the United States, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Analysis on the effectiveness of child safety seats has shown them to reduce fatal injury by 71 percent for infants (under 1 year old) and by 54 percent for toddlers (1 to 4 years old) in passenger cars. For infants and toddlers in light trucks, the corresponding reductions are 58 percent and 59 percent, respectively. Further analysis has shown that among infants and toddlers, an estimated 263 lives were saved in 2013 by restraint use (NHTSA). The Massachusetts Child Passenger Safety Law requires children who are under 8 years of age or less than 57 inches in height must ride in a child safety seat or booster seat appropriate to their size based on the manufacturers’ recommendations. The Massachusetts Safety Belt Law requires passengers of all ages to wear a seat belt. In addition to the car seat checkpoint, the Massachusetts State Police will utilize a rollover simulator to reinforce the consequences of travelling unrestrained in a motor vehicle.
This checkup is part of a statewide child passenger safety initiative made possible by federal grant funding provided by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security (EOPSS). Questions on this checkup or any aspect of child passenger safety may be directed to the EOPSS child passenger safety hotline at 1-877-392-5956 or by visiting www.mass.gov/childsafetyseats.
