Happy Birthday, SAFE Kids Alabama!

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With so much sad news in the world, it’s refreshing to hear positive news around our children’s safety. This year, Children’s of Alabama is celebrating the 30th year of the SAFE Kids Alabama chapter, and 30 years of progress in keeping our children safe.

From the very beginning, the purpose of SAFE Kids Alabama was to build a statewide, grassroots coalition and to encourage corporate and private participation in preventing unintentional injury in Alabama children.

As hard as it is to fathom today, when the Alabama chapter of SAFE Kids launched in 1989, there were no child passenger restraint nor seat belt laws of any kind in the state. Take a moment to let that sink in. Thanks in part to this organization, a lot has changed to make the state’s roads safer for children and their families, saving countless lives.

Go, Alabama!

Our fair state was one of the first states in the nation to establish a statewide SAFE Kids coalition. Since the chapter’s founding, Children’s and its SAFE Kids Alabama partners have led an ongoing campaign that includes education, legislation, environmental modification, and technological application.

“It’s one of those things that people may take for granted, but this state is truly safer for children and drivers of all ages today than it was 30 years ago,” said Dr. Bill King, the first director of SAFE Kids Alabama. King is now retired from Children’s and is a Professor Emeritus at UAB. “A lot of hard work by a lot of people and agencies from all across the state, including bipartisan political efforts, was necessary. Our numbers of severe injuries and deaths in children are much better than where we were.”

King continued, “Improvement in usage rates of car seats and seat belts are particularly noteworthy. Of course, there are always important, new challenges for us to address, like teen driver and passenger safety!”

We’ve Come a Long Way

Accomplishments since the chapter’s founding in 1989 include:

  • Overall child passenger safety usage has increased from less than 10% in 1981 to more than 96% today, according to the Alabama Department of Public Health.
  • The following laws have been passed in Alabama:
    • 1982 – law passed requiring children through age 3 to be transported in child passenger safety seats;
    • 1991 – the first seat belt law passed, making not wearing a seat belt while being in the front seat a secondary violation;
    • 1994 – law passed stating that children younger than 8 years of age must wear a properly secured U.S. Coast Guard personal flotation device (PFD) at all times while on-board any boat, except when in an enclosed cabin;
    • 1995 – bicycle helmet law passed, requiring everyone under the age of 16 to wear a helmet when riding a bicycle;
    • 1999 – the existing secondary seat belt law (from 1991) was now made a primary offense;
    • 2002 – the First Graduated Driver’s License (GDL) passed, requiring new drivers achieve stages of advancement before unrestricted teen driving (generally limiting late-night driving and the number of passengers under age 21);
    • 2006 – the car seat law amended to include booster seats;
    • 2010 – GDL amended with numerous restrictions, including use of any handheld communication device;
    • 2015 – GDL amended to require additional supervised driving time and reduced nighttime driving;
    • 2017 – GDL amended to allow for primary enforcement.

An Ounce of Prevention…

Marie Crew, the director of SAFE Kids Alabama, pointed to several Children’s Hospital-led initiatives involving pedestrian safety, bicycle and ATV safety, and distracted driving as examples of raising awareness.

“Our immediate focus is on helping raise safety awareness among teens and their parents,” Crew said. “As the old saying goes, ‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.’ We want to do everything we can to help parents model safe driving behaviors and to initiate what can be uncomfortable conversations with their children about the risks associated with the responsibility of driving.”

So join all of us at Birmingham Moms Blog in wishing a very happy birthday to SAFE Kids Alabama! Thank you for keeping us safe and informed!