Over 500 children are killed and many more injured each year due to a lack of effective restraint. A significant number of the deaths and injuries suffered by our most precious cargo – our children – could be avoided by design and warning changes, which should be made by automobile and child restraint manufacturers. This article will first focus on potential dangers to our babies and toddlers; make recommendations for parents to protect their youngest children; and suggest design changes that manufacturers should implement. The second portion of this article addresses the “forgotten children.” Children between 4 years and 8 years are often taken out of child restraints, yet cannot safely be restrained in adult automotive seat belts. Automotive manufacturers need to make changes to protect the gap in safety that exists with our forgotten children.
Let’s first focus on the smaller children – those under 4 years of age or 40 pounds. How are these young children being injured and killed in collisions? This article examines two recurring safety problems with our infant child restraints: (1) improper fit between the child restraint and the automotive seat and (2) poorly designed harness systems, which should, but many times do not, hold your child into the restraint.
Injuries can be caused when the child restraint does not fit properly into the automotive seat. Is there any vertical or horizontal play or movement between your child restraint and the automotive seat? Without a tether, your rear-facing child restraint almost certainly has excessive vertical play. Can you lift the top of the rear-facing seat up toward the roof of your automobile? Under crash forces, this play or movement can cause whipping action, exposing your child to dangerous abrupt acceleration changes, which may cause brain damage. Child restraints without upper tethers (in both the rear-facing and forward-facing configurations) will rotate about the lap belt, either dumping the child in the forward-facing position or slamming the child into the carrier arm or automotive seat in the rear-facing position. Further, excess movement can result in head excursions and associated injuries.
Until car manufacturers integrate child restraints into their vehicles, parents can take several important steps to reduce the injuries associated with a poor fit between the child restraint and automobile seat. First, do not buy your child restraint in a vacuum. Test several different restraints to determine which model best fits your car. Second, ensure that the child restraint has an upper tether strap. This tether will not only help secure the seat horizontally, but can eliminate the dangers of vertical rotation. Also, install the child restraint as tightly as possible into the automobile seat. Place a knee in the restraint and pull the belts to maximize the fit. If you can easily move the restraint a few inches side to side, it is not safely installed. Finally, in September of 2002, the National Traffic Highway Safety Administration begin requiring child restraints be tested with the new LATCH (Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children) system. The LATCH system provides a significant improvement in problems caused by a poor fit between the child restraint and automotive seat. Most new cars and child restraints have this important safety feature. If these systems are available on your vehicle and child seat, use them. If not, consider updating for the safety of you and your youngest passengers.
In addition to harm caused by improper fit between the child restraint and automotive seats, many times the harness system is the culprit in injuries and death. The harness system is the safety belt(s) used to restrain the child to the restraint. If a child seat harness (or belt) meets the FMVSS (Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards) performance standards, then it is approved for sale and distribution in the United States. There is no specific design requirement. As a result, there are several different designs of harness systems available. Some of these include are: 3-point harnesses, shield systems and 5-point harnesses. The first two designs should be avoided, as they both can present unnecessary dangers.
The 3-point harness incorporates two straps over the child’s shoulders meeting at one point in the crotch. Because of the single lower restraint point, this design is susceptible to ejection, an over-concentration of lower body forces and submarining.
Moreover, 3-point restraints often used friction-based chest clips. Chest clips should work to hold the two shoulder straps in proper position over your child’s torso. Friction-based clips are often weak and easily slide up and down the straps. A chest clip that is out of position can lead to ejection. Better chest clips are based on spring buckle systems, which reduce this problem. These spring systems more often are incorporated on 5-point harness systems.
The next design, a shield system, is the most dangerous. Shield systems were introduced in 1979 and were designed to be used in conjunction with a lap belt. The shield systems are dangerous because they offer no or insufficient upper torso restraint. As a result, frontal collision forces concentrate on the abdomen, causing hyper-flexion over the shield. Too many children are paraplegics because of lower spinal injuries associated with this design. Parents, if you have a child restraint that incorporates a shield, throw it in the trash. The safest harness system is a 5-point restraint. The 5-point restraint incorporates two straps over the child’s shoulders and two straps over the pelvis, all buckling at the mid-line over the crotch. The 5-point restraint is the safest design because it distributes crash loads and helps prevent submarining and ejection problems associated with the lesser designs.
What happens to our toddlers when they become children? The last portion of this paper deals with safety for your children. Vehicle manufacturers design automotive belts for average adults, but have forgotten children. Children between 4 and 8 years of age are often too big for regular child safety seats and too small for adult safety belts. Children under 80 pounds and 49 inches generally do not fit correctly in adult restraints. Shoulder restraints contact the children’s necks, often resulting in cervical fractures and quadriplegia.
Children will also submarine, causing abdominal and lumbar injuries. Parents with children ages 4 to 8 should place them in a booster with an integrated back and a 5-point harness system designed to fit the child. Some boosters raise the child, but use the vehicle’s seatback and seatbelt to restrain the child’s body. These designs, while sometimes allowing for a better fit within the automotive belt, are not nearly as effective as those with integrated backs and 5-point harness designs. Ultimately car manufacturers should integrate built-in child restraints for the forgotten children. These designs have been commercially available since the 1980s and should be made available in all fleets. Until integrated child seats are widely available, place your children between 4 and 8 years who are under 80 pounds and under 49 inches into a booster with an integrated back and a 5-point harness system.
We hope these tips will help protect you and your loved ones given the limitations of today’s designs. At PayneMitchell Law Group. we will continue to fight for safer designs for the benefit of all of our children. If you have a question about or a potential case involving child restraints, contact Andy Payne.
