Maria Canton
Northern News Services

NNSL (Sep 01/99) - Parents beware, your child may not be properly secured in their car-seat.

In a weekend effort by the Yellowknife Fire Department and the Department of Transportation, a car-seat inspection clinic saw the inspection of 35 seats.

According to deputy fire chief, Mike Lowing, 18 of the seats were either unsafe or incorrectly used.

"The car-seat with the highest misuse rate was the forward facing car-seat," says Lowing.

"People didn't understand the tetherstrap systems, many weren't using the tetherstrap or didn't know what it was for."

By law, a child cannot be in a forward-facing seat until they are over 9 kilograms in weight.

When properly used, a forward facing-seat is held in place by both a seat-belt and a tetherstrap -- which runs from the back of the seat and is connected to a tetherbolt in the floor of the vehicle.

"About four out of five seats didn't have the tetherstrap connected or the bolt wasn't attached," says Lowing.

"That remains a major problem and in an accident, it certainly wouldn't achieve the safety rating that it's rated for."

Weight rather than age is used as the guideline for when a child can move from a rear-facing seat to a forward-facing seat and then to a booster seat.

Once over the weight of 27 kilograms, the child can safely move to a regular lap and shoulder belt.

"Once the child is over 60 pounds, or 27 kilograms, they are seen to have sufficient body size to take advantage of the lap and shoulder assembly," says Lowing.

When buying a car- seat, the store manager at Wal-Mart says he directs the parents to the fire department for proper installation.

"When they come to buy one, they tend to trust the quality that the store is carrying," said Mark Schaffel.

"They are usually concerned about the colour and padding and we always tell them to have the fire department help them install it."

Statistics from Transport Canada indicate that less than 35 per cent of young children in the NWT are restrained by car-seats. And less than half of those are properly restrained.

Every year in the NWT about 30 children under the age of five are injured or killed as passengers in motor vehicles.