Friday, 23 March 2018 - 7:35pm |
Southern

Hundreds educated on child restraint safety in Dunedin

1 min read

Dunedin Police have helped to keep our tamariki safe today with a successful operation to promote safe and correct use of child restraints.

Between 11am and 2pm today Dunedin road policing staff, along with Plunket car seat technicians, were set up in the north Dunedin Warehouse and Pak‘nSave carpark.

The focus was to help reduce injury and death on our roads by raising public awareness on how to correctly use child restraints.

In today’s checkpoint 115 car seats were checked and Police found that 70 percent of the child restraints weren’t being used properly.

“These errors ranged from the straps not being used, to seats with incorrect fittings and even inappropriate seats being used,” says Senior Sergeant Jared Kirk, Otago Coastal Team Leader Road Policing.

Plunket staff were quick to assist in refitting the car seats properly.

“One of the families which was stopped had recently migrated to New Zealand and they had an empty car seat in the vehicle for their child who was not travelling with them at the time. They had been given instructions on how to buckle the child into it but didn’t know the car  seat had to be attached to the car. 

“Plunket installed the car seat properly for them and we helped to teach the family how to ensure it was used correctly in future,” says Senior Sergeant Kirk.

“The family were very grateful, the Grandmother had tears in her eyes. This is a great example of how helpful this education exercise has been.

“Today we’ve made sure every person who drove away from the checkpoint knew their children were correctly fitted in their restraints. That is a fantastic outcome.”

ENDS

Issued by Police Media Centre