‘Parents need to be good role models’ for child seat safety

There are best practice recommendations on car restraints but the UAE needs a law making it compulsory, said Dr Reem Al Ameria.

Dr Reem Al Ameria helps to buckle up her daughters, from left, Jineen, 5, Yasmina, 12, and Diyala, 8. Jeffrey E Biteng / The National

ABU DHABI // For Dr Reem Al Ameria, buckling up and making sure her children are strapped in to properly installed car safety seats is second nature.

“Parents need to be good role models and buckle up in front of their children,” she said. “You can take your children and involve them in the decision-making. Help them fix their car seats and let them enjoy them. I always tell my kids, ‘You have your own special sofa’.”

The World Health Organisation has recommended that the UAE introduce a law that makes child car seats compulsory, as well as seat belts for all car occupants.

The correct use of car seats can reduce the likelihood of car-crash deaths by 70 per cent in infants, and by 54 to 80 per cent among young children, the WHO said.

A car seat advocate since joining Health Authority-Abu Dhabi in 2008, Dr Al Ameria, a Jordanian, hopes a mandatory car restraint law will be in place soon.

The UAE has regulations banning children under the age of 10 from sitting in the front seat of a car, with a Dh400 fine and four black points for drivers who flout the law.

There is, however, no law saying young children need to be strapped in to safety seats.

“Unfortunately, the seatbelt law is not enforced,” she said. “It’s always safer for children to be in the back seat.”

There have been many calls for a change to the law to make child car restraints compulsory in the UAE. In March last year, Hussain Al Banna of the Roads and Transport Authority in Dubai, said the issue was being discussed at the federal level and that it would be made mandatory in the near future.

There are best-practice recommendations on car restraints but the UAE needs a law making it compulsory, said Dr Al Ameria, who works as a freelance consultant specialising in health communications and social marketing.

She became a certified child passenger safety technician in 2011, after completing a course designed by US-based Safe Kids Worldwide.

“There’s nothing more important than children, one of the most vulnerable creatures,” said Dr Al Ameria, a mother of three daughters, who are 5, 8 and 12 years old.

“In a crash at 50 kilometres an hour, an unrestrained child would be thrown forward with a force comparable to falling from a three-storey building.”

Car seats are designed to withstand the forces of a crash and protect a child from being ejected in an accident.

“A properly installed car seat suppresses the crash forces over a large area of a child’s body and that reduces the injury risk,” she said. “The shell of the car seat – the plastic part – also absorbs some of the crash force.”

Parents with infants or children on their laps, children bouncing around in the back, waving at other drivers and parents lifting kids through the sunroof or dangling them out of windows were commonplace in the UAE, she said. “It saddens me. A sudden brake or collision could result in a child being thrown around and out of the car.”

Parents need to get car seats based on the child’s weight and adhere to safety standards, Dr Al Ameria said.

“The car seat needs to fit your child, fit your car and needs to be easy to use every time,” she said. “Always get one that you’re comfortable with, and make sure you know how to install it.”

A barrier to child car restraints was the size of Emirati families and culture, Dr Al Ameria said.

“They have big families with maids and nannies accompanying the children in their vehicles, so there’s less space inside,” she said. “For me, if you’ve got a five-seater, there should be five occupants and five seat belts. If we manage to convince parents into making child seats a priority, then everything else will take a back seat,” she said.