27/06/2018

Brake highlights child seat importance

Road safety charity Brake has created a new short, animated film to help promote the importance of using child seats in cars.

The film uses simple, fun imagery to show why it's so important for children to sit in correctly sized and fitted restraints. Crucially, it reminds drivers of the need to use child seats in cars until a child is 150cm tall. Although the law states that children should be seated in an appropriate restraint until they are 12 years old or 135cm tall, Brake and other road safety professionals recommend that child seats are used until they are 150cm tall. It is widely regarded that adult seat belts do not provide enough protection to children below that height [2].

The film is part of a suite of resources created by the charity and Churchill Car Insurance for schools, nurseries, playgroups and childminders running a Beep Beep! Day.

The Beep Beep! Day project, now in its 15th year, aims to engage children with road safety basics through fun activities, while raising awareness among parents and the wider community about protecting children on roads.

Today (Wednesday 27 June), more than 40,000 children, aged 2–7, are due to take part in a Beep Beep! Day across the UK.

Brake produces free and low-cost resources for educators to use, as well as advice for them to pass on to grown-ups. In 2017, more than 2,000 nurseries, schools and childminders registered to take part in a Beep Beep! Day, helping spread important messages to more than 350,000 children.

Beep Beep! Days take place three times a year. In March, nearly 19,000 children took part in the project, and even more have signed up to get involved on Wednesday 21 November – during UK Road Safety Week.

Beep Beep! Days also provide an ideal opportunity for nurseries, schools and childminders to fundraise for Brake, by encouraging children to dress in stripy clothes in exchange for donations. Funds raised help the charity to campaign for safer roads and support people who have been bereaved or seriously injured following a road crash.

The video can be watched here.

Dave Nichols, community engagement manager at Brake, said, 'An adult seat belt is not designed to protect a child. Using a properly fitted child restraint that is appropriate for the child's height reduces the risk of death and can help to prevent serious injuries. Beep Beep! Days are a great way to start talking to children about basic road safety messages, but they are also an ideal opportunity for us to get important messages home to grown-ups – and that includes using correctly fitted child seats. It's fantastic that so many children are taking part in a Beep Beep! Day today and we hope educators will enjoy using our new resources to support this cause.'

Sophie Frampton, manager at Churchill Car Insurance, said, 'We are very proud to be supporting Beep Beep! Day once again this year. The new video adds to the wide range of resources made available to those participating, to not only make this a fun day, but a day that makes a difference and hopefully saves lives. Too many children die or are seriously injured on our roads each week. Beep Beep! Day is a great way of starting to talk to young children about road safety, as well as raising awareness among drivers, including parents and grandparents, of the need to drive with extreme care when young children are about.'