Of all the things you are sure of, making sure your children are properly buckled in the car should be at the top of your list. The answer could mean the difference between life, serious injury or death for your children.
I’d like to cover this important topic in this blog post and in next week’s post.
With Child Passenger Safety Week coming up later this month (Sept. 18-24), we’re making a concerted effort to helping parents choose the right seats for their children, and teach parents how to use the seats the right way.
Motor vehicle crashes are a leading killer of children 12 and younger. From 2010 to 2014 an estimated 601,000 children were injured and 3,181 were killed while riding in cars, pickups, vans and SUVs.
As a parent or caregiver, you know your children count on you to keep them safe. When traveling, the best way to protect them is to place them in the right car seats for their age and size, install the seats correctly and ensure that the car seats fit properly in the back seats of your vehicles. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 59 percent of car seats are misused.
Research shows that when used correctly, car seats decrease the risk of fatal injury by 71 percent for infants and 54 percent for toddlers (1 to 4 years old) in cars, and 58 percent, and 59 percent, respectively, for infants and toddlers in light trucks.
But what about other types of vehicles? We’ll look at the misconceptions about car seats and larger vehicles when we continue our look at this important topic in my next blog entry.