Safe Journey, a unit of the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office, will be offering its child injury prevention services during the Mountain Business Association's Spring Expo. The event takes place at the Signal Mountain Business Center Saturday, April 30 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Two of the unit's three employees are Signal Mountain residents, yet the Expo will be the first time Safe Journey has focused its efforts here.
"Our purpose is really community education," said Becky Campbell, a Signal Mountain resident and Safe Journey employee since last July, when she wrote the grant to start the program. "We want to come find out if your car seat is right for your child, and make sure children are secured properly and riding safely."
The unit is entirely grant funded through the Tennessee Governor's Highway Safety Office, and its employees go through a rigorous certification process through Child Passages Safety Centers of Tennessee.
Campbell said Safe Journey sometimes teams up with law enforcement to check car seats at road blocks, but the unit does not issue tickets.
"We want to instruct parents how to use their car seats properly," she said. Nationwide, statistics show four out of five car seats, or about 80 percent, are used incorrectly. In this region, the rates of misuse are higher, up to around 92 percent.
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Common problems include use of a car seat that does not fit the child, and people who turn the car seat to a forward-facing position from the safer rear-facing position too soon.
Safe Journey also sets up at four locations around town for several hours each month.
"Those with car seats and young children pull in, and we show them how to use the car seat properly for the child that they have," she said.
Typically, a few adjustments to the car seat parents already own is all that is necessary to get a child on the road safely. If a car seat is unsafe to use or more than 5 or 6 years old, they may recommend the parent buy a new seat better suited to the safety of the child.
"If they meet the financial criteria and we see a real need, we have some funds to provide a car seat," said Campbell. "We don't recommend a used car seat."
If the parent is unaware of where the seat has been, it should not be used because it may have been through a serious crash and have invisible defects, causing it to not perform as well in the case of a second crash.
"A lot of people don't understand car seats have an expiration date on them," she said. "They have an actual date stamped on the back."
Safe Journey also wants to make people aware children under age 9 or 4'9'' should be in a booster seat.
"With everything we know about keeping children safe and car seats, crashes are still the leading cause of death for our children under 14," said Campbell. "A car seat can reduce the rate of injury by 70 percent."