Letters to the Editor

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Buckle up!

Child safety seats reduce fatal injury by 71% for infants (younger than 1 year old) and by 54% for toddlers (1-4 years old) in passenger cars. We, as parents and grandparents, do our best to ensure the safety of our little angels. It showed at Flora Community Park!

All the volunteers from Farm Bureau Inc. who sponsored this for the second year and provided the funding for the replacement seats, to the volunteers from White County Memorial Hospital, to Carroll County EMS and Rescue Squad, the Identi Kid person, the volunteers from Flora to the child passenger technicians. I cannot forget all the parents, daycare providers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, who came and waited long periods to have their seats inspected. Did you know five of the seven technicians were law officers and all gave up their Saturdays, volunteering for the safety of our children! Thank you!

I have been a certified child passenger technician for 10 years and have inspected hundreds of child seats over the years and can't stress enough to be familiar with your child seat, and how to install it. These events are for education. The industry that makes all of these safety devices for our children needs to make all of it the same. That way we won't have to say I did not know that. There are too many different devices and instruction manuals to know.

I started this 10 years ago. Being an OB nurse working in the emergency room, one morning I saw firsthand the effects of a child seat not used properly because education was not provided to the parents. I see the face and curly hair of that child often in my dreams. We can't afford to lose our children in a vehicle crash; they are our future.

Remember to buckle up the ones you love! We checked 64 seats that day and replaced 32!

Sharon Hartwell, Child Passenger Safety Technician and Grandparent