The Missouri Coalition for Roadway Safety is a partnership of safety advocates throughout the state who have come together for a common purpose:  to end traffic fatalities and serious injuries on public roadways. Missouri’s Strategic Highway Safety Plan, Show-Me Zero, outlines the state's plan for achieving success by implementing strategies most effective at mitigating the behaviors and issues most commonly associated with fatal and serious injury crashes in Missouri. Zero fatalities is our goal. Anything else is simply unacceptable. 

Buckling up is one of the easiest and most effective ways to protect yourself in the event of a car crash. Unfortunately, car crashes remain one of the leading causes of serious injury and death for our most vulnerable passengers, children. This can be due to families not having the financial means to provide an appropriate car seat for their child or families lacking education and confidence about which car seat is appropriate and how to correctly use one. MoDOT’s Highway Safety Office (HSO) helps support Missouri families by purchasing car seats for registered car seat inspection stations that distribute the seats to low-income families. Along with each car seat distribution, families are also provided with high-quality information from a certified Child Passenger Safety Technician (CPST) about how to correctly install and use their car seat.

The HSO purchases car seats twice per year through funding from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), once in the spring and once in the fall. In spring of 2025, the HSO was able to order 1,367 convertible (rear and forward-facing harness) car seats and 823 combination (forward-facing harness and booster) car seats. To supplement our funding from NHTSA, the HSO also used state funds to purchase an additional 447 convertible seats and 272 combination seats during the spring order. In fall of 2025, the HSO was able to order 427 convertible seats and 260 combination seats. In total for 2025, the HSO was able to provide 2,249 convertible seats and 1,355 combination seats to approximately 170 different car seat inspection stations across the state.

If you would like information about how to become a car seat inspection station, please contact Lillian Hinkson at Lillian.Hinkson@modot.mo.gov or (573) 751-5420. If you would like any of our free printed resources, such as car seat law brochures or child car seat identification stickers, these can be ordered online at https://www6.modot.mo.gov/HighwaySafetyOrderSystem.