Child car seat inspections being held in RR and Stratton

Ken Johnston
Editor

Safety for children is the main reason the Healthy Communities Coalition is hosting its 4th annual Love Me Buckle Me Right Day.
As part of a province wide seat-belt awareness campaign, the HCC has organized two car seat clinics to be held in Stratton and Rainy River later this week.
Accessing training dollars from the Rainy River Valley Safety Coalition, HCC sent Gabe Langlais of Pinewood and Doug Irish and Jacquie Sharpe of Rainy River to a certification course on child car seat safety. This week they will use that knowledge to help people improve the safety of their infants in the car.
HCC co-chair, Gayleen Jasper said that the program is not designed to catch people breaking the law and ticket them, but to increase awareness about the importance of properly buckling in the child seats and strapping the kids into the seats.
Since the program began in 1998, many things have changed involving the car seats. Most new vehicles now have the hooks for attaching a tether strap to the seat. For that reason and others Jasper recommends that people who took the program a few years ago should consider taking it again.
Langlais, Irish and Sharpe will conduct inspections and tell people how to correct the situation. They will also go over a huge list of seats that have recalls on them for safety reasons and advise the owner’s if they need to have the seat repaired or replaced.
The inspection usually takes less than 30 minutes and they are being held at the toy libraries in each community. The libraries have agreed to keep an eye on the kids while the parents go through the inspection process.
The inspections are free of charge and will be held in Stratton Thursday from 10 a.m. to Noon. In RR they will be held Friday from 9:30 a.m. to Noon. Those interested should call either toy library and make an appointment.