Child Passenger Safety Project

Child passenger safety is an area of key concern to Kidsafe, the Motor Accidents Authority and a number of other departments and organisations. The Child Passenger Safety Project is a joint project to address this issue.

Based at Kidsafe NSW, funded by the Motor Accidents Authority (MAA) and supported by a range of key stakeholders, this project targets parents and carers of children aged between 2 and 6 years of age to highlight the importance of their role in child passenger safety.

The Motor Accidents Authority (MAA) is involved as the regulator of NSW's compulsory third party personal injury (CTP) insurance scheme - or Green Slips - and has a legislative role to support injury prevention and contribute to the reduction of injury and disability as a result of crashes on NSW roads. The MAA supports road safety by funding initiatives targeting groups that are a high risk and/or cost to the CTP scheme. Key target groups include pedestrians, youth 17-25, children 0-16, and motorcyclists. This project is one of those initiatives.

The key messages promoted by the project are as follows:

• Choose, correctly fit and always use a restraint most appropriate to a child's size (height and weight)
• Keep children in their most appropriate sized restraint for as long as possible as promotion to the next stage progressively reduces the amount of protection offered.
• The use of child restraints and modelling of occupant restraint use is an adult's responsibility.
• It is illegal not to use a restraint.
  

Project Goal and Strategies

The goal of this project is to increase the incidence of children travelling in the most protective restraint for their size through increased awareness and improved behaviour of parents and caregivers regarding child passenger safety.

Strategies of the project include the following:

• A website to allow easy access to information and resources.
• A campaign to reach parents and carers in the priority target groups.
• Resource development to support the media campaign
• Provision of Small Grants for localised community-based projects

Information and resources are targeted to parents and caregivers, of children aged between 2 and 6 years of age, within NSW.

The project has a Non-English Speaking Background (NESB) component and targets Arabic, Chinese and Vietnamese languages as the most predominant NESB groups in these areas overall.

This project is a part of the KIdsafe/ MAA Child Road Safety Initiative which is supported by the RTA, Early Childhood Road Safety Education Program, NSW Health, NRMA Motoring and Services, NSW Department of Education and Training and Farmsafe Australia.

This web page has been developed as part of the Child Road Safety Initiative, funded by the Motor Accidents Authority and based at Kidsafe NSW.

Last updated November 2005