Councillor makes plea over child car safety
Police chief quizzed at meeting
A Stirling councillor is continuing to highlight the importance of properly fitted child car seats after he and his family escaped a horror accident.
As reported last month in the Observer, Thomas Heald, a Conservative councillor for Dunblane and Bridge of Allan, was travelling along the M9 near Dunblane, with his two young children, in the family’s Renault Kadjar SUV, driven by his wife.
The couple and their daughters - aged just three-years-old and 22-months-old - were left badly shaken after the vehicle hit a patch of standing water on the carriageway, causing the driver to lose control.
The car then flipped four times before finally settling on the verge.
Miraculously, none of the four occupants of the car were seriously injured.
Cllr Heald – who was first elected as the ward member for Dunblane and Bridge of Allan in a by-election in January later thanked the emergency services and passers by who rushed to their aid following the horror incident.
At a recent meeting of the council’s public safety committee, however, he took the opportunity to raise the importance of child car seats with police representatives.
He said: “I was involved in a car accident a few weeks ago and it became apparent that without the appropriate use of child car seats that outcome could have been very different.
“Are there any awareness campaigns you are doing to ensure parents get the right seats and that they are properly installed?”
Andrew Thomson, Head of Road Policing for Forth Valley Police Division said: “We work with a charity called the Good Egg safety charity.
“They are predominantly focused on child car seat safety.”
Inspector Thomson said the charity worked with the police “not in terms of fines” but as experts in car seat fitting, adding that those who had improperly fitted seat were “no doubt...not doing it on purpose”.
Last month Councillor Heald told he Observer he and his family were “lucky to be here” after the car they were travelling in flipped and rolled four times on the M9 near Dunblane.
At that time, he said: “We will be forever grateful for the swift actions of a passer by who stopped to help us and also the emergency services who acted swiftly and professionally at our time of need.
“I just wanted this opportunity to thank them publicly and also to stress that, without seat belts and the appropriate car seats for our daughters, we would not be here today.”
Councillor Heald was sent to Forth Valley Royal Hospital for a CT scan after the February 21 accident but was given the all-clear, escaping with bruising all over his body and aches and pains.
For further information on car seat safety visit: https://www.goodeggcarsafety.com/ scotland.html