Introduction:
Parents naturally consider child safety their top priority, especially in regard to retarding the possible hazards of auto travel. Since the baby was born, the next best safety assurance is for you to install the correct car seat.
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And as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reminds us, assured installation carries serious import: when installed properly, these seats reduce the risk of death for infants by up to 71 percent and for toddlers by 54 percent.
The Crucial Role of Car Seats: Your Child’s First Line of Defense
The non-negotiable reality of car seats is that when it comes to child safety, they cannot be compromised on or talked out of. Car accidents are a global leading cause of death and injury to children, and the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that at least a million children are killed in car accidents each year. But if you ask any parent what they do in any situation where a crash could occur, the answer is straightforward and unanimous: buckle up.
Types of car seats:
Car seats for infants and toddlers that are labeled for “rear-facing” should be used for the very youngest of passengers you carry in your car. They offer excellent protection when installed in the back seat of the vehicle. Your child will ride in it facing the back of the car until they are at least 2 years old, or until they exceed the maximum height or weight limit of the seat. At that point, you will need to install a new seat that faces the front of the car. The seat that follows the rear-facing seat is commonly known as a “convertible car seat.” After using it through the child’s 2nd or 3rd year, you’ll have to get yet another seat type—namely, a “booster seat”—if you still want to carry the kid safely in your car.
Deciding on the Perfect Car Seat:
- How Old and Heavy: Find a car seat that matches the age, weight, and height of your child. Find out what the manufacturer says for their car seat’s capacity.
- Safe and Uncompromised: Get a seat that has passed either the US or the European testing. Look for Consumer Reports and Insurance Institute for Highway Safety car seat ratings to get a sense of the best bets for your safety dollar.
- It Doesn’t Take an Engineer: Find a seat that is easy to assemble and install. Straps that don’t go all catawampus. Nary a crick in the neck from reading the directions as you try to figure out which piece goes where.
Proper Car Seat Installation: The Key to Effectiveness
It is very important for car seats to be properly installed. One of the main factors that influence this is following the exact instructions. Every car seat and vehicle are a little different when it comes to installation, so it makes good sense to do a careful read of the car seat and vehicle manuals before proceeding.
The next big factor is getting a good snuggling of the seat inside the vehicle using either the LATCH (Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children) system or the vehicle’s seat belt—that’s a fact. A truly tight installation is the one key difference that can make all car seats work more effectively in a crash. Balancing all the other factors in favor of effectiveness is nice, but would nonetheless have little to no effect if the seats were not fully tight and secure.
Once inside the vehicle, there are also some specifics that should definitely be minded. The first of these is the proper installation angle. A lot of car seats now have built-in angle indicators, while some will still need to be adjusted old-school. While you can find more details on determining proper installation angle in our story linked above, the short version is that once the car seat is in place, it should not be able to move or tip forward more than an inch when either trying to push/pull it horizontally or from the front.
Beyond Car Seats: Additional Safety Measures
- Ensure that everyone in the car wears a safety belt, including passengers in the rear.
- Buckle Up Kids. Do it for me. Do it because I need all the grown-ups who love me to stay safe so they can keep loving me.
- Children and Cars. More than 2,000 kids are dying every year in car crashes. We can—and must—do better.
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Choosing a Safe Vehicle:
How safe is a new vehicle? Safety technologies only work if drivers know how to use them. That’s why we emphasize not only buying a top-rated vehicle but choosing one with top ratings in the specific crash tests that the insurers and the government most heavily weight. After all, your car will be doing you very little good if the first moderate fender bender with it causes whiplash or a trip to the emergency room.
Road Trip Safety Tips:
- Prepare Your Path: In advance, map out your path. Don’t just choose the shortest distance; instead, prioritize going the way that will offer the best experiences and sights along the drive. Include plans for a couple of overnight stops (if necessary), as well as scheduled rest stops.
- Time It Right: Most people want to hit the road first thing in the morning, after they’ve had a good night’s sleep, so they aren’t fatigued from working half a day, only to get on the road and drive another 6 to 8 hours. Another option is leaving in the evening and driving through the night, but this only works well if you have two drivers who can take turns or if you don’t have small children.
- Feed And Hydrate: This is one of those basic things that get overlooked by a lot of people. Provide everyone with as few preservative-laden and high-corn syrup candies, chips, and Big Gulps as possible. Alternatively, pack individual servings of various soda types (coke, diet coke, root beer, sprite, and ginger ale) and hand them out before they hit any sign of uncomfort-ability.
Conclusion:
Ensuring the safety of your child while they are in a vehicle is a very serious matter that is not to be taken lightly. It is nearly impossible to think of anything more horrific than a child being harmed or even losing their life because an adult in their lives was not responsible or did not know how to keep them safe while they were traveling in a car. By ensuring that your child is in a properly installed baby car seat and putting in place any additional safety measures that might be called for,
