Page 3805 - Week 13 - Thursday, 18 October 1990
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passengers in motor vehicles and the wearing of seat belts or child restraints has been shown to significantly reduce the death and injury rates of children in crashes.
As to the problems that I refer to in relation to young children sitting on the laps of their parents or sharing a seat belt, as often happens as well, I think those of us who have seen the very graphic film evidence of what happens to a child in that situation cannot but be moved, I would suggest, to take appropriate steps to take young children out of that danger area because, frankly, we never know when we may be involved in an accident.
It is also interesting to note that a lot of accidents, quite a large majority of accidents, actually happen within, I believe, a few kilometres from home. Therefore, it is very important, I would suggest, to encourage parents to ensure that their young children are firmly buckled into the seats as quickly as possible - almost as soon as they get into the car - so that it becomes an automatic reaction. Certainly, it is a reaction that my children developed pretty early in the piece, and I am sure that those parents who have children who travel in motor vehicles should adopt that practice as well.
As I said, the impact of a crash at 40 kilometres per hour is such that the child will continue to travel at that same speed until he or she is stopped by the impact of hitting the dashboard, windscreen, or other object. This impact has been likened to falling from the fourth storey of a building on to the pavement. I think, clearly, that is something that we, as parents, have a responsibility to ensure does not happen.
To date we have been very fortunate that few children under one year of age have been seriously injured or killed in road accidents in the ACT. I seem to recall that last year there was a very serious accident on the Yass highway where a young child, in fact, was saved by one of these road safety capsules. I think that should have had a major impact on those parents who had not seen those pieces of equipment in action to actually do something about it.
I appreciate the fact that they are expensive; but, as Dr Kinloch has indicated, "what price the life of a child?". However, might I also suggest that there are very good restraint loaning services available, some of which have been established by service clubs within the ACT. I know there is a very successful pilot program that was established in the Tuggeranong region and I believe it has now expanded fully out into the rest of Canberra. I would encourage parents to make use of that facility. I think the charge is about $35, which is a very inexpensive way of ensuring the safety of the young children.
Mrs Grassby has already said that 57 per cent of persons killed in road accidents in Australia in 1989 were not wearing seat belts or child restraints. That is a terrible
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