Published on Monday, June 12, 2006
in the Orlando Sentinel

Ex-TV star pushes child-seat safety

Parents driving with faulty car-safety seats could be putting their children in danger every time they strap them in.

Some seats are too small. Others have been recalled, unbeknown to parents, because of safety problems. Others have been damaged in accidents.

And some drivers don't use car-safety seats at all.

It's particularly a problem among people who have trouble affording what can be an expensive item.

But even pop princess Britney Spears got some bad press recently for driving with her son on her lap instead of safely tucked into his car seat.

"She should be in a car seat," said celebrity Erik Estrada, who visited the Florida Mall on Sunday to help promote car-seat safety.

The former CHiPs star has used his B-list-celebrity status to draw parents to safety-seat events for a few years. Estrada's former TV role as a highway patrolman and his popularity with Hispanics -- one of the groups targeted -- made him a natural pitchman, event organizers said.

"I'm a closet cop," said Estrada, adding that as the parent of a 6-year-daughter, child safety is also a personal issue for him. "I have a fondness for law enforcement."

Estrada signed autographs and posed for photographs Sunday as dozens of cars lined up to have car seats inspected or get new ones for free.

Specially trained technicians, mostly law-enforcement officers, worked at about a dozen booths, surrounded by several models of Graco car seats that had been trucked in from a Dallas warehouse. The Florida Highway Patrol and 21st Century Insurance put on the event. The insurance company paid for the seats.

Technicians performed 160 inspections and gave away 142 child-safety seats.

The event was targeted toward people who might not be able to afford a car seat. However, officials stress that having money or a higher level of education is no guarantee you know how to install a car seat.

"No matter if you're poor, rich, out of college, don't have college, we encourage people to get their car seat checked so their car is safe," Highway Patrol spokeswoman Trooper Kim Miller said.

Officials say most child-safety seats are improperly installed.

On Sunday, child-safety-seat technicians found that many of the seats were not appropriate, so they were replaced with safer ones. The old seats -- some broken, others too small -- were placed in a pile to be destroyed. The seats are cut up by firefighters to ensure they don't end up in someone else's car, Miller said.

Of the three or four she had inspected early Sunday afternoon, "so far, every car has gotten a seat," said Becky Albers, a community-services officer with the Kissimmee Police Department.

Albers installed two new seats in an older-model Honda Accord for a 6-year-old girl and her 3-month-old sister. The older girl had outgrown her car seat. The infant's car seat -- a hand-me-down from her sister -- had been recalled.

"Remember -- every single time, right?" Albers prompted Giovanna Castanaza of Orlando as the big sister tried out her new booster seat.

Norma Garcia of Kissimmee needed a larger seat for her daughter who had just turned 1. After installing the seat, Albers got one of her more unusual requests of the day: Garcia asked for help folding up an umbrella stroller. Albers' training to install car seats doesn't include umbrella strollers, but she helped out nonetheless.

Victoria Miller of Orlando had recently gotten into a fender-bender and didn't know whether she should still use the car seat for her 7-month-old daughter, Isabelle.

"I just wanted to find out if my car seat's all right to use," she said.

It was not.

Replacing a car seat is recommended whenever a vehicle has been in an accident, said Lt. Kevin Vaughn of the Florida Highway Patrol.

"We don't really know what kind of damage the seat might have incurred during the crash," he said.