Russian Polling Agency Conducted Screening on Child Safety in Cars

11 November 2011

The All-Russia opinion poll was made on the eve of the start of "Car Seat to Every Child!" campaign.

It was found that it was found of drivers carry children in baby seats. These are the findings of the poll conducted by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (VTsIOM) in anticipation of the social campaign "Car Seat to Every Child". The event was initiated by the Road Traffic Inspectorate reporting to the Russian Interior Ministry with support of the Russian Union of Car Insurers (RUCI); the campaign began on November 1.
"Unfortunately, even now the vast majority of parents believe that the car seat is a minor thing, assuming that the child is safe inside the car, - said the Head of the Road Safety Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation Police General Major Victor Nilov. - Therefore, the results of the study indicate that the seat is available only in half of the car stock in families with children under 12 year old; in Moscow the share of the owners of car seats is much higher - 72%. At the same time more than a third of the parents surveyed who have cars in Russia do not even plan buying it".
"Such attitude towards own children can be only classified as next to the criminal one, because in the end of the day the parents consciously expose to risk the life of their children ignoring the protection means altogether and the use of these means is mandatory by law", - Victor Nilov informed. - Of course, on its side the part traffic police monitor implementation of the traffic rules in practice, specifically the paragraph that obligates transporting children under 12 using child restraints, penalizing offenders; but this activity does not change the situation in fundamental manner. Therefore, the decision was taken to conduct a large-scale social campaign under a simple name "Car Seat to Each Child". The main focus of this campaign is to draw attention to the problem, to explain to parents once again in plain language how important it is to install a special car seat for a baby. In addition, we will try to promote seats among children. We made a special video with the main character being a car seat, plus in 10 cities we will stage an entertaining "Cresland Treasures" game.
Head of the Russian traffic police said that the magnitude of fatalities among children caused by motor vehicle accidents was raising high concern, although it was noted that the overall numbers declined during 10 months of 2011 if compared to the same period of the last year. "At the same time the number of accidents involving young passengers increased, the fatality in this age group grew by 10.6% (absolute figure being 448 people); the number of injured increased by 4.8% (7623 people). In majority of cases the cause of death or serious injury deals with failing to use a child seat", - said Victor Nilov.
All-Russian polling on the issue of issue of child safety during transporting young passengers was carried out in the form of street interviews conducted with road users. The survey took place in more than 40 regions of the country. The total number of people interviewed was more than 2 thousand.
The study revealed that only a quarter of those surveyed (24%) identified correctly the age past which children were allowed to travel inside the passenger cars without using child seats and sitting at the front passenger seat. Among the drivers the correct answer to this question was given by 31% of the polled. Unfortunately, only 2.4% of respondents felt that carrying children without using child seat should be classified as a gross and life threatening offense.
The parents having no child seats in cars were also asked what was preventing buying them. Most often the respondents gave two reasons: high cost and, in opinion of adults, uncomfortable sitting for the child.
The majority of parents purchased car seats when the child began sitting (35%) or when the child grew older than one year (34%). Only a tenth of respondents purchased seats when they were planning to make long car journeys. Future moms and dads in Russia do not hurry buying car seats before the baby is born. The survey indicated that only 4% of the families purchased seats before newborns were discharged from the maternity hospitals; about 2% acquired the seat during pregnancy. It is noteworthy that 16% of Moscow parents reported that they got a seat before the baby was discharged from the hospital.
The basic criterion to choose a car seat for a child dealt with its specifications. This indicator was mentioned by 59% of Russians and by 79% of Muscovites. And for the Muscovites the second most important criterion was associated with manufacturer's brand name (41%), while the Russians put on the second place the price of car seats (46%).
Most often the Russians were buying a seat within the price range from 3 to 5 thousand rubles (40%), the cheaper seats – from 1 to 3 thousand rubles - were favored by the second largest group of respondents (31%). As for the polling among Moscow residents they were often in favor of 3 to 5 thousand rubles (51%), the price above 5000 rubles was mentioned by 27% of those polled.
"Conducting this survey, we pursued several goals - said Natalia Agra, the president of noncommercial organization “Risk Free Road Traffic". – We estimated not only the total number of parents who use car seats, but the reasons why some stay away from buying them. As a result 62% of polled people could not give an exact answer, and among the most popular explanations there was a belief that children are safer when carried on the parents’ hands (20%) and the lack of understanding of the meaning behind using child seats or similar devices (13%)".
The survey showed that one in five Russians in the past year acted as a passenger carrying a child without using a special car seat (21%), this similar numbers in Moscow were much higher (29%). The other 14% were transporting children acting as drivers of the passenger vehicle.
"The main reasons of using child car seats deal with estimating what share of respondents is aware of potential consequences of failing to use these devices (51%); we also try to estimate our the respondents informed about the ease of using these seats for carrying young passengers (18%), - Natalya Agra added. - It is noteworthy that if benchmarked to Russians Moscow motorists mentioned more often situation where the availability of a child car seat helped avoid a (7% vs. 3%), and that transportation of children in the seat is more comfortable (13% vs. 6%)".
The correct answer to the question on the weight increment when a vehicle undergoes abrupt deceleration was given by no more than 16% of Russians and less than 21% of respondents in Moscow. This implies that the majority of our citizens simply do not understand the logic behind installing car seats and using seat belts.

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Russian Polling Agency Conducted Screening on Child Safety in Cars

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