CHILD SAFETY SEAT TRAINING FOR TECHNICIANS HELD

Four days of classes and hands-on training to put child safety seats in cars might not be enough.

"In this amount of time, we're doing good to get it all in," said Sharee Galnore, who helped coordinate the state's first child-passenger-safety technician training for this year.

About 20 people came to Cape Girardeau, some from as far away as Whiteman Air Force Base, to become certified through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's program.

The administration states that there is an 80 percent misuse of child safety seats nationally.

This contributed to the deaths of 36 children under age 5 last year in Missouri accidents, Galnore said. Another 1,762 children in the state were injured in car wrecks.

Often, problems arise when switching child safety seats between cars that have different restraint systems, said Galnore, coordinator of the Cape Girardeau Safe Communities program.

"The makers of the seats set performance standards, not design standards," she said.

This gives the impetus to the seat-belt-technician-training program, said Kari Blaeuer, safety specialist with the Traffic Safety Administration. In addition to an inch-thick policy manual, the trainees are given courses in injury prevention and crash dynamics. They also receive lessons in the proper selection, installation and use and abuse of car seats, she said.

Some parents make mistakes in attempting to adapt a safety seat to a car, Galnore said. In 15 years of work in child safety, she has seen plywood boards used for boosters, duct tape applied for strength, and combinations of crisscrossed seat belts.

The most common mistakes parents make are not making restraints tight enough or placing the car seat or child in the wrong direction, said Kevin Johnson, an officer with the Columbia Police Department who taught courses this week.

Another frequent, possibly fatal error is putting a rear-facing car seat in front of an air bag, he said. The force of an air bag expanding on impact during a wreck can kill a small child.

Besides a group of nine from Southeast Missouri Hospital, paramedics from St. Charles County and a woman from the Jackson Optimist Club attended the training.

"A lot of people go out of state to get this training," Blaeuer said.

The training certified some as instructors and others as technicians. A year ago, Missouri had only two certified instructors, Blaeuer said. Now there are 15. The state has almost 100 certified technicians.

"We're trying to build up both numbers," she said.

With the creation of more certified instructors, Galnore said courses can become more locally focused.

As part of the training, a child safety seat check will be held from 3 to 6 p.m. today in the parking garage at Southeast Missouri Hospital.