How ‘Road Safety for Kids’ Products Changed One Mum’s Life

NEW SOUTH WALES, Australia June 2014 – Children often offer the most thoughtful, creative and loving gifts, thanks to their huge imagination and boundless energy. Some find amazing ways to make their parents happy with handcrafted works of art and personalised presents, but one mum in particular claims to have received the best gift of all from her children; the knowledge of the importance to protect them using road safety teaching tools, and the realisation of her goal to spread the word to help other parents keep their children safe too.

Jo Byron, manager and creator of Safe-T-Hand – a business that sells road safety teaching tools – says she owes her business success to her kids, who got her started on creating products to promote road safety for kids and prevent accidents. “The concept of teaching children to stand or wait close to the car began with my eldest daughter in 1998,” says Jo. “She was two and we put paper butterfly stickers on the car and talked about them while I put bags into the car, shut doors, etc. After explaining to her that drivers can’t see her but they can see our car, she understood she was safest standing close to our car. The butterfly stickers helped distract her until I could hold her hand and walk away, or help her into the car.” www.safethand.com.au

Jo’s learning experiences continued as she had more children. “When getting out of our car, my toddler son took advantage of my distraction with his baby sister. He’d run away through a car park out of my reach, and chasing him only turned it into a game,” says Jo. “So I made waiting safely interesting for him by putting The Wiggles stickers on our car, to keep him near me. These were replaced with decorated magnets for his baby sister to use as soon as she could walk. But eventually rain destroyed our sticker creations, and I was told that craft magnets would eventually ruin the car’s paint.”

Jo’s friends thought the idea of children having something to ‘focus’ on, rather than to instruct a child to ‘put your hand on the petrol cap please’ was an inspiring idea and asked for Jo’s advice on how to make one for their own children. Jo’s desire to share her knowledge around road safety for kids sparked the launch of her business Safe-T-Hand. www.safethand.com.au

Safe-T-Hand provides parents and carers with a teaching tool, making it easier for them to develop road safety awareness in children. The paint safe, magnetic hands are applied to the outside of a car for a child to focus on and touch until a parent is ready to hold their hand or buckle them into a car seat.

Parents Australia-wide are now loving the benefits of the Safe-T-Hand tools to help teach road safety for kids without damaging their car’s paint. Rachel Gallagher from Howlong, NSW says, “Safe-T-Hands are amazing for my son; he has a very short attention span and I had ended up holding him with white knuckles around cars. After getting to know Jo and her amazing Safe-T-Hands, Harry now is more focused on getting his hand on the sticker than anything else when he’s near the car, to the point that if I pop out the front to grab the mail Harry stands next to our car in the driveway with his hand on the sticker rather than get the mail! He is always telling my friends who get into our car that he has a hand car on his door. Thanks Jo, great product.”

Discover how Safe-T-Hand can help teach children road safety at www.safethand.com.au.

Contact Information

Jo Byron

Manager

Safe-T-Hand

(61) 0400 595 206

jo@safethand.com.au