As a keynote speaker at the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM) Annual Conference in America, Malaysian child passenger safety advocate and road safety educator, Dr. Jchanet Tan, presented Malaysia’s unique, bottom-up model for advancing child passenger and road safety through community partnership, education, and empowerment.
Grassroots model, global relevance
Her presentation – From PitStop to Policy: A Decade of Community-Driven Road Safety in Malaysia (2015–2025) – described a grassroots model with global relevance. What began in 2015 with 4 self-funded individuals passionate about child safety evolved into a national movement. Dr Tan’s PitStop Check and Outreach program brings child safety seat education and installation to markets, carparks, and cafes — directly reaching families in their everyday lives.
“Safety should never be treated as a luxury, but as a necessity for future generations,” she told the audience. “We have proven that with creativity, collaboration, and compassion, change can begin anywhere — even from the back of a parking lot.”
The initiative, once driven solely by volunteers, has now grown to a community of over 200,000 members, with childseat usage rising to 40% nationwide, and booster seat adoption increasing to between 30 and 40%.
Making safety sustainable
Dr Tan invited collaboration to turn Malaysia’s success into a quantifiable, replicable model for lower- and middle-income countries — where safety education is often limited by funding.
“Most global programs are grant-driven or top-down. Our model is the reverse — bottom-up, demand-driven, and powered by community ownership,” she explained. “When people lead, governments follow. That’s how we make safety sustainable.”
Her call for collaboration focuses on developing scalable, data-driven models adaptable across ASEAN and globally, aligning with the United Nations’ Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021 to 2030.
Dr. Tan is one of the few Malaysians to speak on the global stage among the world’s leading researchers in trauma, injury prevention, and transportation safety. Her work spans advocacy, education, and mental health through the ‘Story with Light’ campaign under the ASEAN Empowerment platform.
