THE lives of thousands of children in Scotland are being put at risk because their parents do not know how to fit their car seats safely.
Nearly half of all car seats checked during a child safety initiative were found to be incorrectly fitted, incompatible with the vehicle or unsuitable for the child.
More than half of parents said they had not been shown how to put the seats in properly before setting off on journeys, the research found.
Director of Road Safety Scotland, Michael McDonnell, said retailers should be providing installation advice to parents buying new car seats.
"It is very disappointing to find that many retailers are still not providing basic safety information when selling child car seats," he said. "I would strongly urge parents and carers to visit an in-car child safety clinic so they can be confident their children are safely restrained."
The findings, part of the Scottish Good Egg In-Car Child Safety Initiative, also showed that more than 10% of parents are not confident about their ability to fit seats safely.
The figures come after road casualty statistics published last week by Transport Scotland found five children were killed last year while travelling as car passengers.
Running for 10 years, the Good Egg campaign aims to ensure babies and children are properly restrained while travelling in the car.
Its findings, which involved assessing nearly 2000 car seats in Scotland, were supported by the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland.
Superintendent Alan Duncan said: "We are still finding children who are either not wearing seatbelts or who are restrained by unsuitable or incorrectly-fitted car seats."
The charity is today launching 54 free in-car child safety clinics around Scotland, which will run for the next three months, offering checks on car seats.
Sir Arnold Clark, chairman and chief executive of the Arnold Clark Group, has sponsored the Good Egg campaign each year since its national launch in 2002.
He said: "It doesn't take much time to check that a car seat is fitted properly and it will always be too late after a collision.
"I therefore urge parents to go to a Good Egg clinic to ensure that their child seats are fitted safely – it could ultimately save their child's life."
In the UK, the legal requirement is that children under 12 – or less than 135cm (4'5'') tall – must use a car or booster seat while children under three travelling in a vehicle must be carried in a correct child restraint, either a baby seat or child seat.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article