21/10/2019

Chile: a success story

Thanks to all this preceding work, in 2014, the Foundation signed an agreement with CONASET to carry out a technical partnership with a goal of holding more Car Seat Checkpoints and trainings on the safety of child passengers, as well as developing and exchanging studies regarding child traffic safety.

In 2016, CONASET hosted the International Forum on Traffic Safety (FISEVI, according to the initials in Spanish) where the Chilean Minister of Transportation and Telecommunications agreed to legislative changes regarding the mandatory use of CRSes in Chile. This entailed increasing the age up until which CRS use is mandatory, as well as implementing a comprehensive plan regarding CRS training, communication and enforcement. The Gonzalo Rodriguez Foundation collaborated with CONASET on the technical parts of the law, recommending international best practices that take into account child physiology.

Building on these previous collaborations and with the support of INTERVIAL-Chile, in 2018 and 2019 they carried out three trainings, in the framework of the Child Passenger Safety Training Program, directed at CONASET collaborators and other organizations related to traffic security. The objective was to train an expert on child traffic safety in each of Chile’s 15 regions who could collaborate to replicate best practices, share their expertise and help implement the public policy that CONASET established. These courses began in 2018 and ended July 2019 and were accompanied by a diffusion of information by CONASET, directed at communities in order to continue promoting the correct use of CRSes and legislative achievements across the country.

In total, 44 experts from 9 organizations were trained and over 250 car seats were installed in 15 Car Seat Checkpoints.