Working with Kidsafe to keep our children safe on Tasmania’s roads

The Hodgman Liberal Government is committed to working with the community to achieve our Towards Zero goal, a long-term vision of zero deaths and serious injuries on our roads.

Today is National Kidsafe Day, and I am pleased to see that Kidsafe, the Child Accident Prevention Foundation of Australia, is focussed this year on child passenger safety and particularly child restraints.

Sadly, road crashes remain the leading cause of death and injury for children up to 14 years.

This is in spite of our country being fortunate to have one of the best child restraint standards in the world.

Clearly, it is critical that drivers ensure children are in the appropriate child restraints for their age and size and that they remain fastened at all times when travelling.

The Liberal Government is supporting Kidsafe’s work with the RACT with a grant of $14,400 to deliver eight free child restraint checking sessions around Tasmania to ensure parents and carers have correctly fitted restraints in their vehicles.

This grant has been made available under our new Community Road Safety Grants Program, which is providing $600,000 over three years and is funded from the Road Safety Levy.

Kidsafe believes that our goal should be zero deaths and serious injuries among child passengers, which is very much in line with our own Towards Zero goal.
Rene Hidding, Minister for Infrastructure