Questioning state level CPS campaign

The nice folks in my state government are driving me crazy. There is way too much misinformation about car seat use in my state and much of it is coming directly from the state.

In addition to brochures that are printed and distributed promoting our weak state law and not mentioning best practice, the final straw for me was the State Patrol display at our State Fair last week that had 3 "seats", an infant seat for "Rear Facing 0-1 yr of age, up to 20 lbs" no mention that you should rear face longer, then a high back booster "forward facing 1-5 years 20-65 pounds", then a low back booster "booster seat or seatbelt 6-11 years of age"

So I called today to find out who was in charge of the display and the woman was insistent that yes, a high back booster was fine for a 1 yr old and the display was appropriate. I was just livid. I know I should have kept my temper and made some comment about being suprised that the State Patrol encourages the use of booster seats for babies considering the toupers are the ones that have to deal with children that have been ejected from booster, then thanked her and let her go. I was so mad.

I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to post this but really, I feel like I need to do something. Other than contacting legislators and working to get stronger CPS laws passed which would force state agencies to update their decade old CPS education campaign materials, is there anything that can be done to get state beurocrats to do their jobs?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

i don't know if this will work:

holy crap.

Of course, it doesn't help that Dorel and Evenflo have on multiple 'booster' seats "for children at least one year old, thirty pounds, 34" and who can sit upright"

You need to contact Stephanie Trombello (SafetyBeltSafe USA) .

Ughhh, I feel for you. My city(carseat techs) was like this until I handed them handouts multiple times and kept talking to them. I also contacted safe kids.

Northriver said:

So I called today to find out who was in charge of the display and the woman was insistent that yes, a high back booster was fine for a 1 yr old and the display was appropriate. .

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Can you give us her name and contact information?

It is very frustrating, I went to a check the other day with a friend. The tech gave her a backless booster for her son who fits very well in his XT. Now of course because the tech was telling him its a big boy seat blah blah blah she has trouble getting him to sit in his Radian

That's HORRIBLE! I can't believe they could be so misinformed, and passing that truly UNSAFE information on to families. A 1 year old in a high back booster? What are they thinking?

I wish I had some advice for you, but I'm just dumbfounded. Are they even thinking logically about what that would look like, to see a 1 year old baby sitting in that big booster seat with a seat belt across her face? I think they may be confusing it with a combination seat with a harness, even though that still not best practice, it would at least be LEGAL to have a 1 year, 20 pounder FF in a harness.

Yikes. Please KUP on this, I surely hope you can make some headway with them!

jodibug said:

Can you give us her name and contact information?

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I didn't get her name. I just called the main number for the Iowa State Patrol and asked who I needed to speak to about the display at the State Fair, and apparently the woman who answered the phone was actually the one who set up the display. She did say she'd pass the information on to her supervisor.

I'm not a tech and I feel like I have no credibility when I call people about CPS issues. I'd love to take a class but I haven't found one locally. Even if I was educated enough to promote CPS, I'm not as well spoken as most of you on this board. I just know that that display was doing more harm than good.

jodibug said:

You need to contact Stephanie Trombello (SafetyBeltSafe USA) .

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Thank you, I sent Stephanie an email.

Northriver said:

Thank you, I sent Stephanie an email.

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You should get a response from her soon. She is great at talking to people about this stuff.

I would've had a heart attack seeing that! What the heck were they thinking?