Study: Most parents fail child car safety seat test
— -- After hitting road debris, their car slid into a guardrail and spun across the highway before flipping over and landing upside down on rocks.
Emergency medical technicians later told parents Jeff and Anne Hamilton that when they see cars as crushed as theirs was in March, they assume any children inside are dead.
Anne Hamilton, however, is trained to install child seats and had each of her three children in the best possible seat and position for their ages. She's convinced it prevented what could have been life-threatening injuries to the three girls, then ages 2, 4 and 6. The worst injury was a broken leg suffered by the 4-year-old.
Most parents aren't using child seats correctly, research released Thursday from the non-profit group Safe Kids USA shows. Only 30% are using the tether straps that keep the tops of child seats — and children's heads — secured in crashes, and many are not using the safest seats for their children's ages.
In what is believed to be the largest study ever done of child seats, Safe Kids reviewed 79,000 car seat checklists collected at inspection events the group held in 2009 and 2010. Because parents voluntarily take their vehicles to checkups, the rate for proper usage is likely even lower, Safe Kids says, which underscores the need for more education.
Although the death rate has declined, car crashes remain the leading cause of death for children ages 3 to 14, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data. Properly used child safety seats decrease the risk of death by 71% for infants and 54% for toddlers, NHTSA says. Children are 59% less likely to be injured in a booster seat than if they were using seat belts only.
"As a parent, if something ever happened to my child when I was driving, I'd have to know I did everything possible right or I wouldn't be able to sleep at night," says Lorrie Walker, Safe Kids' child passenger safety technical adviser and co-author of the report.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, Safe Kids and other safety organizations recommend that children stay rear-facing in vehicles until they are 2. Safe Kids said that parents were "doing a better job" keeping kids rear facing, but that more needs to be done to educate parents about the importance of doing so longer.
Top concern: Tether straps
Safe Kids spokesman Kyle Johnson says it was impossible to quantify how many kids had moved out of the right seat for their age, but many showed up at checkpoints in the wrong seat or none at all. That was especially common for children ages 7 or 8, who should have still been in booster seats.
But the low rate of tether strap usage was the biggest concern.
Tether straps and their in-car attachment points have been on child seats and new cars for more than a decade. They are part of the LATCH (Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children) system that was required as part of a $152 million federal rule that was phased in starting in the late 1990s. LATCH was supposed to make child seats easier to install by eliminating the need to wrestle with seat belts to secure them. And the more snugly installed seats would save lives and prevent up to 3,600 injuries a year, NHTSA said.
Child safety advocates say several factors are contributing to the disappointing showing. One is a lack of public awareness.
