Noisy whiners don’t speak for Sun City

One more letter to state the obvious: It is absolutely absurd to keep the Lake Mead Boulevard-Las Vegas Beltway interchange unopened when it would be of such great service to the residents of Sun City Summerlin and the entire area (“An interchange collecting dust,” Aug. 3 editorial). If the interchange is not opened, the decision makers are pandering to a very small, loud-mouthed group of malcontents who do not represent the 13,000 good people of Sun City.

With high gasoline prices, it is ridiculous to make us waste time and drive extra miles to enter the Beltway elsewhere in order to take advantage of shopping and many excellent businesses that are used regularly by the residents of this area.

We do not know exactly who is responsible for making the important decision to open the interchange, but we know for sure, it should not be this small, noisy group of whiners. These perpetual complainers should have done their due diligence when they bought their property, and it is criminal to punish the rest of us for their negligence.

Carla Terzich

Loren Terzich

LAS VEGAS

Misleading readers

To the editor:

When, oh when, will you learn to check your facts before publishing editorials that are dangerously wrong? In your zeal to bash “all things regulatory,” you have once again misled your readers.

Your Aug. 3 editorial on Assemblyman John Carpenter’s bill draft request for child safety seat training must have been researched 10 years ago. As a general rule, things change in 10 years.

There was a time, long ago, when hospitals checked to make sure new parents had properly installed child seats in their vehicles when discharged with their new treasures. This is not true anymore, due, I’m sure, to lawyers getting involved. Many hospitals offer services to voluntarily get your child seats checked, but none is mandatory or offered on demand as part of discharge.

There was also a time, long ago, when you could go to some neighborhood fire stations and an emergency medical technician could check your seat. Alas, those days, too, are over. We are left with a multitude of vehicle seats, restraint systems and child safety seats. Proper installation is very difficult, as Assemblyman Carpenter found out.

Whether we should have a law mandating training for anyone is for lawmakers to decide after hearing the facts and being educated from both sides of the issue. That is their job; it is why we elect them. Your job, as the largest newspaper in the state, is to provide unbiased facts to those who read your newspaper, assuming you have done your homework.

Your bias against keeping Nevadans safe has really become laughable. In this extreme monetary crisis for the state and every taxpayer in it, ask yourself how much the bill is for every improperly restrained infant, child, teen and adult needlessly injured or killed because it was their “personal choice” to ride as they choose.

The price tag just for shutting down a street for a two- to four-hour investigation, with all the personnel needed, is well into the high six figures. Those are real costs, not statistics, not a formula, and your readers and all other Nevadans pick up that tab.

You are so into your personal freedoms that you fail to realize that everyone’s choice could be different than yours. My choice would be that people get to do the jobs they were hired for. Cops could go out and enforce laws, rather than respond crash to crash and investigation to investigation because you chose to not restrain yourself or your child.

Erin Breen

LAS VEGAS

THE WRITER IS DIRECTOR OF UNLV’S SAFE COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP.

Mandatory classes

To the editor:

Why does training new parents in child safety seat use have to be a bad thing? New parents have the opportunity to take classes in everything from prenatal yoga to how to breast-feed to how to be a dad. Why shouldn’t they take a class in how to install a child safety seat, one safety device that could actually save their child’s life?

Even though safety seat manufacturers have gotten better at making instructions easier to read, they are still complicated. Throw in the fact that you can install a seat in a variety of seating positions in the back seat with several types of restraint systems to secure the seat, and many parents throw their arms up in the air and give up.

Here in Clark County, according to statistics gathered from safety seat checkup events sponsored by Safe Kids Clark County, we have a near 99 percent misuse rate. When Safe Kids Clark County participates in a mandatory police safety seat checkpoint (similar to a DUI checkpoint, but strictly for child safety seats), it is a 100 percent misuse rate.

Most parents who have their safety seats professionally installed are thrilled to have been shown how to property install the seat. Most have no idea that the seat could be much more secure than it was, and are grateful to know their children will be safer as a result.

Heather Watson

LAS VEGAS

THE WRITER IS VOLUNTEER COORDINATOR FOR SAFE KIDS CLARK COUNTY.