28/05/2018

Child seat check-up point at Ciudad de la Costa

With the support of the BSE and the Municipality of Canelones, on Saturday, May 26 at the Costa Urbana Shopping, for the third time, the Child Passenger Safety technicians of the Fundación Gonzalo Rodríguez, together with Canelones Traffic Inspectors from the Road Safety Promotion Unit, provided advice to adults in charge of transporting children in private vehicles on the correct installation of Child Restraint Systems (CRS) for their children to travel safely.

The five technicians in Child Passenger Safety (3 of the Foundation and 2 of the Municipality of Canelones trained by the Foundation in 2017) worked non-stop during 4 hours, verifying the correct installation of 40 child restraint systems free of charge.

This activity is part of the promotion of the use of Child Retention Systems nationwide that the Foundation began last year with the support of the BSE and in coordination with provincial governments, through trainings to traffic inspectors and check-up points in each locality.

During 2017, 9 training instances were carried out for traffic agents and 10 checkpoints in 5 provinces (Canelones, Colonia, Maldonado, Salto and San José), training 323 inspectors and officials of the provincial municipalities and advising for free in the installation of more than 170 children's chairs.

In 2018, the Foundation plans to extend this program to four different provinces in order to continue advancing with the objective of decentralizing the check-up point service currently carried out by the Foundation at the headquarters of the Automobile Club of Uruguay.

The only province that will repeat will be Canelones, with whom the Foundation signed an agreement in February that establishes actions to help ensure the safe mobility of children in Canelones.

Why children should travel in Child Retention Systems?

At the national level only 23% of children under 12 years of age use a child restraint system and the percentage is even more worrisome in the case of children between 6 and 12 years old, where it only reaches 3.2%.