State and local officials are reminding people during “Child Passenger Safety Week” to buckle up their youngest passengers because car crashes are still a leading cause of death for most children. 

The N.C. Governor’s Highway Safety Program, the N.C. Department of Insurance, Office of the State Fire Marshal, Safe Kids NC and others hosted a press conference in Greenville on Monday to underscore the importance of child passenger safety. During the child passenger safety clinic, experts also demonstrated how to properly install car seats. 

Governor Roy Cooper has proclaimed Sept. 17-23 as “Child Passenger Safety Week” in North Carolina.

While car seats and boosters provide crash protection for infants and children, car crashes are still a leading cause of death for children between 1 and 13 years old. According to Safe Kids North Carolina, nearly 100 children under age 14 die annually from vehicle-related crashes, and about 45,000 minors are injured and need medical treatment.

More than 3,000 nationally certified child passenger safety technicians across the state teach parents and caregivers how to properly install car seats in their vehicles. Thanks to these and other child safety efforts, North Carolina maintains its position as having one of the nation’s strongest programs promoting child passenger safety.

For more information, visit NCDOT’s webpage on child passenger safety.

Learn how to stay safe in the woods with a course 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 17, at Standing Rock Overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The Jackson County Commission is faced with several requests to fund safety operations throughout the county, totaling over $1.5 million. For taxpayers, this could mean over a penny on the tax rate.

A nighttime breath of fresh air turned traumatic for 75-year-old Swannanoa resident Toni Rhegness when she spotted three bear cubs while walking her dog on leash in her front yard Sept. 18.

While Rhegness followed important bear safety rules at her own home — not leaving trash outside and keeping her dog leashed, for starters — her neighbor had left garbage cans outside for pickup the next morning, and the cubs were scavenging them for a meal. Seeing the cubs, the dog barked. Rhegness shouted to scare the bears off and picked up her dog to go inside.

Recent efforts to enhance student safety by placing armed volunteers in the nation’s schools have resulted in predictable blowback from anti-gun activists, some of whom have claimed it’s an attempt by the National Rifle Association to indoctrinate impressionable young minds with pro-gun propaganda. 

Hours after students in schools across the nation walked out of their classrooms to protest gun violence in American schools, students leaders in Jackson County’s high schools walked into the auditorium of Smoky Mountain High School to deliver their thoughts on the topic to a gathering that included the entire Board of Education and Board of County Commissioners. 

The latest mass shooting on Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has spurred a number of potential threats across Western North Carolina. 

SEE ALSO:
• Jackson County leaders plan to prevent Jackson County leaders plan to prevent school violence
• Swain High students walk out of class

School officials and law enforcement officers are investigating several students who’ve made comments about school shootings while others have dealt with social media threats. Not all of the student comments have been found to be a credible or eminent threat, but local law enforcement agencies have made it clear such statements will be taken seriously. 

When a teenage shooter shattered an otherwise normal day in Parkland, Florida, with gunfire and bloodshed, the ripples of fear and tragedy didn’t stop at the boundaries of the previously low-profile town. They spread throughout the country, ricocheting through the halls of far-away schools, homes and government buildings filled with folks asking themselves the same question — how can we make sure this doesn’t happen here? 

Following a social media threat that led to a countywide school lockdown and an early dismissal on Thursday, Feb. 22, many students at Swain County High School staged a walkout on Friday, Feb. 23, to advocate for change.