Child Passenger Safety Week 2007

Background 

For more than 20 years, Child Passenger Safety (CPS) Week has been conducted to draw public attention to the need to properly restrain child passengers to ensure their safety when traveling. CPS Week is observed each year during the full week in February that includes Valentines Day (February 14).  

During CPS Week, NHTSA and its partners seek to reach parents and caregivers with the latest consumer-friendly information to help ensure that the children in their care ride in the child restraint system (child safety seats, booster seats and seat belts) appropriate for their size and age.  CPS Week features a wide variety of activities designed to attract public attention and spur increased child restraint use, including earned media, targeted educational activities, cutting-edge research and public/private partnerships.  

In February 2007, NHTSA will call attention to CPS Week by commemorating an important milestone reached in 2005: more than 7,500 child passengers have been saved by the use of an age/size-appropriate car seat since 1975.  NHTSA will call attention to that milestone through a national media event, and will encourage all parents/caregivers to seek out a Child Safety Seat Inspection Station to have their safety seats checked. 

Theme – 4 Steps for Kids, with an emphasis on booster seats 

National Seat Check Sunday

“Seat Check Sunday” will take place on Sunday, February 11, the first day of CPS week.  NHTSA will encourage its partners to plan and conduct CPS inspection stations across the country on that day, and motivate parents/caregivers to have their car seats checked. 

National Press Event

• A national event will take place in the Washington, DC, area on Wednesday, February 7 (tentative date) in advance of “Seat Check Sunday,” announcing  CPS Week and the “Seat Check Sunday” program.
• The event will feature a young adult who, as a child, was saved in a crash years ago thanks to his/her having been restrained in a child safety seat in a crash.  This person will represent the 7,500^th life saved in the past 20+ years by car seats.  

State/Local Earned Media Opportunities

• Conduct an event, prior to CPS Week, that mirrors the national event (e.g., with a local young adult who was saved in a crash as a child, as an example of the lives saved in a particular state).
• Encourage local media to announce inspection station times/locations on TV/radio (in much the same way school closings are announced).
• Invite local media to inspection stations to talk with technicians about child passenger safety, age/size-appropriate seats, LATCH, and www.safercar.gov for ease of use ratings, recalls, and to report defective seats.
• Report on numbers of vehicles/families participating in the program, announcing the numbers of misused or recalled seats.
• Announce other opportunities throughout the week where parents can have their child safety seats checked.
• Potential partners for CPS Week 2007 include: Daimler-Chrysler, which maintains the SEATCHECK safety seat inspection locator service inspection service (available online and via toll-free telephone);  CarMax, which has expressed interest in supporting local CPS activities at its retail locations around the country; Babies “R” Us, which has provided hundreds of thousands of car seat discount coupons in support of CPS Week activities since 2004; and Safe Kids Worldwide, the certifying body for the national standardized child passenger safety technician training program.  (Please remember that SEATCHECK uses the NHTSA Inspection Station locator.  They use our information, so it’s very important that we have our information current and correct.)
• All partners will be asked to promote National Seat Check Sunday and link to www.boosterseat.gov on the home page of their websites.  

Support materials:

• NHTSA will produce and make available online the CPS Week 2007 planner and similar materials suitable for local use, such as posters, and fill-in-the-blank press releases and news advisories.
• No new PSAs will be produced for CPS Week 2007.  Instead, NHTSA will encourage and facilitate the wider airing and printing of the several pre-existing series of PSAs (radio, print, and television), including those developed with the Ad Council