Be Child Safe

Category: Safe Traveling

  • Child Heat Stroke Prevention

  • Virginia’s New Car Seat Law Promotes Better Safety for Kids in Car Seats!

    SafeKids Coalition says that Virginia has a new car seat law which promises better safety for children in car seats. Children riding in cars in Virginia must now sit rear-facing in their car seats until they reach the age of 2 years or the maximum weight and height limit called for by the car seat’s manufacturer. Children in a car seat must ride in the back seat (unless the vehicle does not have a rear seat). The Law will be effective July 1, 2019, and is based on recommendations by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

    All children in any type of car seat must ride in the vehicle’s rear seat. Children younger than 8 years old must ride in a car seat or booster seat. Children ages 8 – 17 must wear an adult seat belt.

    SafeKids has created The Ultimate Car Seat Guide to help parents, family members, caregivers and guardians learn more about car seat safety. This helpful Guide can be accessed at this website: https://www.safekids.org/ultimate-car-seat-guide/

    Parents, family members and caregivers in Virginia can check with their area’s SafeKids Coalition to learn where they can get inspection of their children’s car seat by a certified car seat inspector! Parents can even register their children’s car seats and watch important safety videos on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website: https://www.nhtsa.gov/equipment/car-seats-and-booster-seats#install-inspection.

  • All-Terrain Vehicles, Alcohol and Families with Children Don’t Mix!

    Requiem for Jaylen and Neaveah–

    August 12, 2013–In Center Point, Indiana, the evening of August 5, one-year old Jaylen, was riding with his two-year old brother Xavier in an ATV being driven by their 22-year old mother. Suddenly the ATV they were riding in, crashed into a cement wall.  Someone had reported an ATV in the area was being driven recklessly earlier.  According to a report in The Chicago Tribune, Jaylen and a two-year old girl, a daughter of the driver’s friend, also in the ATV, were killed.  Jaylen’s brother was injured, and Jaylen and Xavier’s mother died in a hospital soon afterward. According to The Chicago Tribune,  a “preliminary investigation suggests alcohol and excessive speed could have contributed to the crash.”

    However popular, ATVs are not always steady rides. Take them off-road or onto uneven pavement and they can be less steady.  Add alcohol to the mix– and the judgment of the driver can be impaired. Stir it with speed, and you have the making of a tragedy.  Certainly this particular ATV ride turned out to be tragic for more than one family.

    The best thing parents can be when they are with young children is to Be In the Moment!  Be there to watch over and care for kids in case something should go wrong. Be there with all your faculties, so you and your family have good memories of safe, good times together.  Time out of mind is not time to spend with your children or other people’s kids.  We don’t get do-overs for the most important times in our lives, and true child safety involves 100% consciousness–as well as conscientiousness–on the part of parents, family members and caregivers.  Sadly, we have only to look to the daily news to know the opposite is also true.