Iain's Trust has now published a leaflet concerning safety of children around cars, and distributed the flier to doctors’ surgeries and pre-school facilities across the country. Please download your free copy here. There are three issues addressed in the flier:

  1. The necessity of never leaving children in a car with the engine running, not even for a moment.  Additionally it can be tempting to leave a child to sleep in a stationary locked car whilst you nip out for a few minutes, but there have been a number of instances where thieves have stolen a car with children in the back seat and in another instance the child managed to access a box of matches.
  2. The necessity of ascertaining exactly where every child is, every time you move a car in the driveway. There are a frightening number of incidences where a car is reversed over a child and tragically it is usually a family member who was at the wheel. 
  3. The possibility of cars being accidentally started, with tragic consequences should a child be nearby. An easy and relatively inexpensive way of preventing this would be fitting a keybox with a Codelock – a determined child may access the car keys from any other key storage place. Most new models of car will have a secondary safety feature (eg. requiring the clutch or brake pedal to be depressed before the car can start) but many older cars do not have such a system and it is important in this case to be aware of the possibility of the car being started accidentally.