Child Safety Seats

Why are child safety seats and inspections so important?

Each year about 600 to 700 children, birth to 5 years of age, are killed and about 80,000 are injured as passengers in motor vehicle crashes.

The number of annual child passenger fatalities has fluctuated considerably over the past decade. Studies of factors that might contribute to these annual variations suggest that the overriding factor is travel exposure–changes in the amount of time that children spend each year in motor vehicles. It appears that during the late 1980s, when child safety seat use increased rapidly, the positive effect of child safety seat use was overwhelmed by an increase in child travel exposure.

In 1995, about 56 percent of those children who were killed were completely unrestrained at the time of the crash.

Child safety seats could have saved most of those children who died unrestrained–about 200 children could have been saved in 1995.

As many as three-quarters of child safety seats are misused–reducing their effectiveness in a crash. Frequent mistakes include failure to use a locking clip and/or chest clip where needed and improper use of the child seat harness straps.

Not all child safety seats fit all cars. Compatibility problems can make it difficult or impossible to correctly install a child seat in some vehicles. Common compatibility problems include vehicle safety belts that cannot be made to tightly lock a child seat in place, and vehicle seat belt attachment points that are positioned so that the seat belt cannot hold the child seat securely.

Passenger-side air bags are effective at saving adult lives, but present a deadly compatibility problem for children. Infants less than 1 year of age must never ride in the front seat in a rear-facing safety seat in a vehicle with a passenger air bag. In a crash, the deploying bag could strike the rear facing infant seat very hard, seriously injuring or killing the infant. Older children who are improperly restrained are also at high risk. All children are safer in the back seat. Infants must ride in the rear seat, facing the rear of the car.

For additional information, please visit the http://www.nhtsa.gov/ and http://www.safekids.org/ sites.