TV Review : Child Safety Tips Offered on ‘Split Second’

OK, it’s Friday, it’s a holiday weekend, and the last thing you want to do is lounge in front of the tube watching an hour of first aid and safety tips. Do yourself and your family a favor, though: If you don’t want to watch “In a Split Second,” NBC’s child-safety special tonight, tape it for later.

This hour of basic first aid and accident prevention information, hosted by “L.A. Law’s” Corbin Bernsen and his wife, Amanda Pays, is not sexy, exciting or controversial. It’s a potential lifesaver.

Thousands of children are killed and millions are injured in accidents each year, many in ways that could have been prevented had parents and others known how to head off dangers and what to do in an emergency. The show uses dramatizations--a fall down a hillside, choking at a fast-food place, a run through a plate glass door--to show viewers the steps to take to deal with injuries and then how to prevent their happening in the first place.

Did you know that only four iron pills can be lethal to a toddler if taken all at once? That whacking a choking victim on the back is the wrong thing to do? That the full effects of an electric shock may not show up for two days? That butter should not be rubbed on a burn?

Experts from more than 20 organizations--among them the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Red Cross, the Council on Family Health and the National Safety Council--were consulted for this valuable public service.

* “In a Split Second” airs at 8 tonight on NBC (Channels 4, 36 and 39).