Your children are the most precious cargo you carry in your vehicle, and it is crucial to make sure your kids are properly strapped down in their car seats. Yet a recent report suggests that many parents fail to do this adequately, exposing their kids to unnecessary risk in a car crash.
Child car seats have been around for decades, and the law requires that parents use car seats to protect their children. However, like any safety device, a car seat must be used correctly, or else it cannot do its job. As a parent, you cannot afford to assume your child is fastening themselves into their car seats correctly. You need to make sure.
Here are some statistics to consider:
- Child car seats reduce the risk of death by 54% for toddlers and by 71% for infants.
- Safety groups found that more than half the seats they inspected were wrongly installed and used.
Make sure the seat itself is properly installed
Aside from making sure that your child is strapped into the seat correctly, you need to ensure that the seat itself is strapped into the vehicle according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Doing this is not necessarily easy or intuitive, so make sure you read the instructions when you get a new seat. Even a slight installation error could render the seat far less effective.
However carefully you drive when your children are in the car, it only takes one negligent driver to endanger you and your kids. Making certain that the car seat is correctly installed and fastened is a basic step you can take to protect your child from injury.