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A car seat for a child may seem challenging to install, but the difficulty is nothing compared to the process of getting someone to check the installation. Long before we had even purchased Oliver’s most recent seat, I made one phone call after another to a local police station that had offered car seat inspections by appointment in the past. The only times I ever spoke to a live police officer was when I was given other numbers to call. For more than two months, I tried several times a week to call at least one of three numbers I had, only to find that either no one was answering, the officer in question was on vacation, or there was, according to the recorded message, another number that I should be calling. That number in turn provided no answers either.

At the time, I found this process merely irritating, another example of faceless bureaucracy and “voicemail jail.” Looking back, however, I’m puzzled that something so important would have gone without a response. After all, the police are keen to intercept improperly installed car seats during their regular safety blitzes, as the often repeated statistics suggest most child seats are apparently not correctly attached. Wouldn’t it be in the interests of the police to nip the problem in the bud by encouraging parents to get a properly installed car seat right from the beginning?

Even a visit to the police station didn’t help. We mentioned the problem to an officer, who duly noted it, and gave us the name and number of another officer who would definitely be calling us.

We’re still waiting. (It's been over four months and counting.)

I then turned to the St. John Ambulance, where, to my relief, actual people answered the phone and they had scheduled car-seat inspection programs. Nevertheless, the next such date was in a location outside Toronto and the next inspection day in the city was quite a bit later than our anticipated purchase. Fortunately, the SJA representative suggested that we could also ask a fire station to perform the inspection, which I was able to schedule at a convenient time and location without any difficulty.

On the day of the inspection, I wrestled for a while with the new seat we had finally purchased, but after getting a call from the fire station to remind me of the appointment, I decided to get moving. I stopped trying to install the seat, put the seatbelt around it to keep it from shifting around and drove to the fire station.

The first firefighter to look in the car threw a glance at the seat held so loosely in place and said, “Oh, this isn’t right at all,” but to me the important thing was that it was finally being inspected by an emergency services professional. With the help of a colleague who was barely able to fit in the back of our car, she succeeded in securing the seat such that it was completely immobile.

We discovered later that car dealerships also perform free inspections, regardless of the make of car, which really should be publicized to a much greater degree.

Now that the car seat was finally installed correctly, our next challenge was to convince Oliver to accept the reality of the new seat and enter the double-cupholder era.