ROAD safety experts from Nottinghamshire County Council will be out and about from this week offering free child car seat checks at major supermarkets across the county.

“If child car seats are not properly attached to the car in which they are being used then they can give little or none of the protection they are designed to provide,” said Zena Oliver, the council’s principal highways safety officer.

“When we’ve held safety checks before we’ve discovered that as many as 73% of seats were either fitted or adjusted incorrectly.

“In most cases they were either too loosely fixed to the car’s own seat itself or the seatbelt webbing was not threaded correctly through the child seat.

“This can sometimes be a result of the busy lives we all live nowadays, where child seats are moved from car to car, or simply that parents either haven’t been shown how to install the seats correctly, have ignored instructions or have bought second-hand and the original packaging and instructions are missing.

“Our sessions are an ideal opportunity for parents and carers to have their child seats checked and to get any advice or information they may need about general in-car safety.”

This year’s events are being held at the following locations:

Thursday, August 14 – Asda, West Bridgford

Friday August 15 – Asda, Retford

Thursday, August 21 – Asda, Sutton in Ashfield

Friday, August 22 – Asda, Forest Town

Thursday, August 28 – Morrisons, Netherfield

Friday, August 29 – Tesco, Toton

All events are 10am–4pm.