ABU DHABI // Child safety seats are now available free of charge for anyone travelling with children in one of the luxury black airport taxis.
“At the airport if anyone requires a car seat it would just take a minute for the driver to instal it,” Mohammed Al Qamzi, general manager of the Centre for Regulation of Transport by Hire Cars, or Transad, said on Monday.
“To be honest, the mentality here is not to care much about child car seats. However, certain passengers are concerned and insist that children are strapped into the car seats.”
There are 222 black Mercedes vans available at Terminals 1, 2 and 3.
“It’s just a matter of requesting the car seats,” he said. “But by default, our family taxis should have them stored at the back.”
The majority of the silver, Toyota Innova family taxis are equipped with child restraints.
In May last year, the Health Authority Abu Dhabi, Department of Transport and Transad announced they had introduced child safety car seats in some taxis and cars for hire.
“If a child is restrained in a child safety car seat from an early age, then he or she will more likely develop a habit of wearing a seatbelt through his or her life,” Faisal Al Suwaidi, general director of main roads at the Department of Transport said at the time.
The initiative is aimed at training family taxi drivers on the importance of safety seats, for the purpose of to cut the number of injuries to children in road accidents.
The use of age-appropriate car safety seats can reduce up to 80 per cent of all fatal injuries caused by road traffic incidents by up to 80 per cent, experts have said.
The UAE has regulations banning children under the age of 10 from sitting in the front seat, with a Dh400 fine and four black points for drivers who flout the law.
There is, however, no law saying young children need to be strapped in to safety seats.
rruiz@thenational.ae
