Child seat clinic proves successful

With over 55 child car seats checked and installed, the North Bay Police Service and the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit child seat clinic at Canadian Tire Thursday was a success.

“We applaud people who take the step to comply with the laws and to keep their children safe. To keep their child in a seat it’s not always enough the seat has to be appropriate to the child and the seat has to be installed properly in order for it to do its job,” explains Sergeant Noel Coulas.

Coulas says that in recent years there have been a number of changes to when a child can move from car seat to seatbelt and it is important for parents and caregivers to know the process.

“The technology behind car seats has increase tenfold in the last few years and the specifics of a child per seat are much greater in the last few years but time after time.”

“ There’s an infant seat, there’s child seats and there’s booster seats, the infant seat is self explanatory it’s for children in the rear facing because test after test, after test has shown that that is the only way to keep a child that size safe in a car in the event of an accident.”

“And then they move on at some point with weight requirements and height requirements they move to a child seat and then the specifications on how you mount that seat change again, so you may have one seat that is an infant/child seat that’s capable of handling both roles but if you don’t install them properly than the likely hood that your child is going to be injured in a crash is greatly increased,” he says.

“We had an accident recently in our jurisdiction where the officer credited the child restraint for saving that child’s life and you only have to hear or see that once to know that clinics such as this are that much more important. “