One size does not fit all when it comes to safely restraining your child inside a motor vehicle. Research has shown that vehicle occupants who are properly restrained at the time of a crash are more likely to survive the crash and avoid serious injury. Proper restraints lengthen a person’s ride down time, which decreases chances of serious or fatal injury. And they also help prevent vehicle ejections that cause fatal injuries more than 75% of the time. The increasing use of car seats, booster seats, and seatbelts for child passengers has been credited for much of the nearly 50% drop in the number of fatal motor vehicle accidents for children in the last 15 years. But different child growth stages require different approaches to safe restraint by child safety seats and seat belts.
Infants and toddlers should be placed in rear-facing car seats. These are available in both the rear-facing only style and a convertible model that lengthens the time you can use the seat. At around two years of age, most children will be able to start using a forward-facing car seat, but that age is only a rough guideline; you should always check the instructions from the car seat manufacturer and comply with the guidelines regarding height and weight limits for that child safety seat.
Larger toddlers who have outgrown the rear-facing seats and pre-school age children should use the forward-facing car seats with harnesses. Your child should use the forward-facing car seat until he or she reaches the height or weight limit prescribed by the manufacturer.
School aged children should ride in a belt-positioning booster seat until the vehicle seat belt fits and restrains them properly. The Pearland car accident lawyers at Denena Points, PC know from experience that your child will probably protest this, especially as he or she gets older. But seat belt restraints are designed with an “average-sized” adult in mind, and will not fit a child properly nor restrain the child adequately in the event of a wreck. The vehicle seat belt will usually begin to fit properly when the child is somewhere between 8 and 12 years of age, or when he or she has reached a height of 4’9”. Generally speaking, all children under age 13 should be restrained in the back seat of a vehicle for optimal safety. Your child may actually be able to ride extreme thrill rides at the amusement park, in the front cars, before being able to ride in a car without a booster seat. If this seems incongruous, remember that your or your child’s chance of being killed in a car accident on the way to or from an amusement park is actually about 30,000 times higher than that of being killed on the park’s roller coaster.
When your child outgrows the booster seat, he or she can start wearing the vehicle’s lap and shoulder seat belt. The seat belt should seem far less odious and incongruous by comparison to the booster seat. Especially in rollover wrecks, which are surprisingly frequent, our Pearland car accident lawyers emphasize that seat belts have proven to be a great life-saving feature in your vehicle.
Click the link to learn about a new proposed rule from the U.S. NHTSA designed to enhance child safety seats in vehicles.