Thursday was designated by the California Highway Patrol as Vehicle Occupant Restraint Day, and local CHP officers partnered with Ruth Cardoza of Healthy Start to provide child passenger safety seat education to Santa Barbara residents.
The Healthy Start program is a community collaborative effort funded by Proposition 10 to serve families in the Santa Barbara School District’s child-development programs with parent education.
The presentations included how to properly install child passenger safety seats, common mistakes made during installation and the laws associated with seat belts. Five local Healthy Start qualifying elementary schools were visited: Adams, Cleveland, Franklin, Harding and McKinley.
The CHP provided valuable information and answered questions from more than 100 people throughout the day.
Santa Barbara CHP road patrol officers focused their attention on people who failed to buckle up, and wrote 82 citations to seat belt violators Thursday.
— James Richards is a public information officer for the California Highway Patrol, Santa Barbara Area.