Traffic Police prepare amendments to increase child safety

The Traffic Police are preparing a set of amendments to the Traffic Rules to provide increased safety for children in traffic. Traffic Police chief Serghei Diaconu has told Info-Prim Neo that one key amendment is the requirement to equip cars with restraints when transporting young children. Today drivers cannot be fined if they don't have such restraints to protect children. As the current Rules state, “children under 7 years of age, who are not supervised by an adult or are not held in an adult's lap, can be transported in vehicles which are equipped with a special contrivance that corresponds to the weigh and size of the child”. Serghei Diaconu says this provision is too loose and doesn't clearly set out the rules of carrying children in a way that is safe for them. “We want to give a clear form to this provision, to set out exactly what types of contrivances must be used. It will be a definition formulated in a European way. We won't invent anything anew; we will borrow from the existing international legislation”. The proposed amendments are now examined by the legal department of the Ministry of the Interior, and after they are coordinated with other authorities, the amendments will be submitted to the Government. Diaconu says that perhaps amendments will be proposed to the Code of Administrative Offenses as well, based on suggestions from the Ministry of Education. Veaceslav Plamadeala, E.R. head at the Municipal Children's Hospital V. Ignatenco, says that many of the injuries he sees every day suffered by children as a result of traffic accidents could be avoided if more attention was paid to the safety of children on the roads and if there were more tougher sanctions for drivers. “Children should travel only on the backseat and only in restraints, which is the only way to keep them safe in traffic”, said the doctor. Tests showed that as a result of a head-on collision between two vehicles, the velocity of a child rises 20 times and there's no parent in the world who could possibly retain a child in his or her lap during such an accident. The use of child restraints would reduce children's death rates by 70% and injuries by 60% in traffic accidents. According to the Ministry of the Interior, from the beginning of the year and until mid-October, 19 children were killed in 244 accidents.