Volkswagen launches child passenger safety campaign

German car company Volkswagen is collaborating with the Association of Registered Childcare Providers Malaysia (PPBM) to raise awareness on child passenger safety.Launched December last year, the campaign aims to educate approximately 28,000 parents on the importance of using proper child car seats.Volkswagen’s collaboration with PPBM involves the roll out of a Child Passenger Safety (CPS) training module. The company will contribute 200 Volkswagen child seats for educational purposes and 10,000 copies of the A-Z of road safety flash cards which will be given to participants.The CPS workshops will be conducted nationwide for 280 childcare centres until August 2015. This includes hands-on assistance with proper use of child restraint systems and safety belts. To date, 100 child safety seats have been distributed to several state associations of PPBM’s network to assist with their trainings.ISOFIX, a safety feature for children, is found in all Volkswagen models are anchorage points which allow two ISOFIX-compatible seats to be secured to the rear seat. Beginning January 1 this year, all car manufacturers in Malaysia would be required to provide ISOFIX capabilities in new vehicles.Puan Sharifah Salmah Syed Harun, director of human resource, Volkswagen Malaysia, said, “As a responsible automaker, we believe in the importance of cultivating children’s safety in cars. Our goal is to change mind-sets and increase awareness about child passenger safety.”“We are deeply saddened to learn of the recent fatal accidents involving infants in which no child safety seat was in use. Statistics have shown that child seats reduce the risk of death by 71% for infants and 54% for children between the ages of one and five. This also fortifies our intention of providing safety features in our fleet of cars such as the ISOFIX and many more,” Sharifah added.