Technical Report - AUTO21

previous surveys. The instrument developed specifically for the parking lot surveywas developed in collaboration with Transport Canada and the leadinvestigators. The format and content of the survey tool closely resembled a childseat inspection form used in child seat clinics. In addition, the demographic datathat describes the seating position and the age, height and weight of each childoccupant had been used for previous National Surveys by Transport Canada.The interview instrument is a subset of questions for the survey instrument usedin the Intervention study recently conducted by Dr. Anne W. Snowdon at theUniversity of Windsor. The interview questions focused on drivers’ knowledgeand awareness of when to transition children into the next child seat, a boosterseat and a seat belt. Drivers also reported on their patterns of where childrentypically sit in the vehicle. The combination of both observation and interviewstrategies will provide data on exactly how families are using safety seats forchildren across Canada and what knowledge they have of accurate use of safetysystems for children travelling in vehicles. The combination of observation ofuse/misuse and examination of parent knowledge provided data linkingknowledge and use of safety systems, for the first time in Canada, at a Nationallevel. This study will examine the following questions: a) What are the patternsand rates of use and misuse of safety seats for child occupants travelling invehicles in Canada? b) What are drivers' knowledge and perceptions of correctuse of safety systems for children travelling in vehicles across Canada?3. Results3.1 General commentsIn total, out of the 200 sites planned for, 16 were dropped either due to storms orremoteness of the sites. These sites are described in table-A below. Droppingthe only two sites assigned to the Yukon territory resulted in deletion of 4185children from the sampling frame which consisted of all children aged 0-17 yearsin Canada according to statistics Canada’s 2004 census.Table-A:Dropped SitesFrequencyAbitibi - Témiscamingue 2Bas-Saint-Laurent2Hamilton - Niagara Peninsula1Kitchener - Waterloo - Barrie1Lanaudière128