Ensuring safe travel The Outline for the Development of Chinese Children has added "Children and Safety" content

Reporter Wang Meihua

People's Daily Overseas Edition (October 26, 2021, 09th edition)

At present, accidental injuries have replaced illness as the number one cause of death in children. Among them, road traffic injuries are the second cause of injury and death for children aged 1-14 in China, and the first cause of injury and death for adolescents aged 15-19 years; about 22,000 minors aged 0-17 die and are injured due to road traffic accidents every year.

On September 27 this year, the "China Children's Development Program (2021-2030)" (hereinafter referred to as the "New Children's Program") was officially announced, which added the "Child and Safety" field, and "promoted the use of child safety seats and safety helmets, and effectively guaranteed children's travel safety" as one of the main goals in this field.

The Beijing Youth Legal Aid and Research Center recently held an online seminar on "Protecting Children from Road Traffic Injuries", and a number of experts in the field of child safety said that the new children's program will promote the use of child safety seats as the main goal, which is of great significance to better protect the safety of children's travel.

"Relevant research and practice at home and abroad have shown that child safety is preventable and controllable." Zeng Guoqiang, deputy director of the Children's Work Department of the Office of the State Council Working Committee on Women and Children, who participated in the formulation of the new children's program, introduced that the new children's program has identified a number of specific measures under the strategy of "preventing and controlling children's road traffic injuries": improving traffic safety legislation, improving the care capacity of children's caregivers, cultivating children's good traffic behavior habits, promoting the use of child safety seats, safety helmets and non-motorized vehicle reflective signs for children's walking and riding, improving children's road safety protective equipment standards, and strengthening production and sales supervision. High operability.

Duan Leilei, director of the Injury Prevention and Control and Mental Health Department of the Chronic Disease Center of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, introduced that compared with other goals in the new children's program, the goals related to child safety seats are particularly clear and specific, and their importance is more prominent.

"In traffic accidents, child passengers can play a very protective role if they can correctly use a car seat that matches their age and height." According to Fang Dan, a road safety and injury prevention project officer at the World Health Organization representative office in China, the risk of death in infants using car seats correctly can be reduced by 70%, and the risk of death can be reduced by 54%-80% if infants use car seats correctly.

"What if I don't use a child safety seat?" Shall bear relevant legal responsibilities. Yao Weiyao, a partner lawyer at Anhui Huishang Law Firm and a member of the Standing Committee of the Anhui Provincial Youth Federation, said that parents should be punished for deliberately not using car seats for subjective convenience or believing that the risk is preventable. He suggested that in the driver qualification examination, the proportion of child safety seat related test questions should be further increased, so that drivers can clarify the importance of child safety seats as soon as possible and enhance safety awareness.

"The quality of the child safety seat is very important." Tong Lihua, director of the Beijing Juvenile Legal Aid and Research Center, stressed that the market supervision department should increase supervision and punishment for enterprises that produce fake and shoddy child safety seats. "After parents buy fake and shoddy child safety seats, they think that their children have safety guarantees, but at the critical time, it cannot play a role, resulting in threats to the safety of children's lives, so in the quality of child safety seat products, not only to strengthen legislation, market supervision departments must also strengthen supervision and punishment."

"There are a lot of steps to getting children to actually use a car seat." Fang Dan said that parents should be willing to give their children to use, but also to buy, affordable, but also to be able to install, can be installed, can be used correctly, each step in the middle involves a lot of interventions, the need for government functional departments, production and sales enterprises, media, public welfare organizations and other departments to work together to participate in the implementation.

Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition