Florida Child Injury Law Blog

Posts Tagged ‘crash’

Summer is here.  Generally that means more families are traveling by car on day trips, long weekends and vacations.   Our daughter was in town recently with our young grandchildren. Her first priority was finding a car seat safety inspection station! Although our infant grandaughter’s new car seat appeared to be secured properly;  our daughter wanted to be sure. Did you know research shows 7 out of 10 car seats are NOT correctly installed?

 The American Automobile Association conducted a survey and found  76% of parents said safety is their main concern when buying a child safety seat but  the  majority of parents polled didn’t know the specifics in regard to placement, age and height recommendations. In a recent study of 3500 car safety and booster seat installations,  72%  of the safety seats were secured in a way that it could be expected a child would suffer injuries if  in a crash.

With all this in mind, here are some safe practices concerning child seat safety and a website to check the locations of child safety seat inspection stations in this area.

 Safety Checklist

•  Parents should ensure that children up to eight years old or four feet, nine inches tall should sit in a safety seat or booster.
•  All children 12 and younger should ride in the back seat of a vehicle.
•  The safest position for a single car seat is the center of the rear seat.

Florida law regarding safety requirements  for child car and booster seats  is more fully discussed in Chapter 1 of my free consumer guide, “When Kids Suffer Big Injuries: A Parent’s Guide to Child Injury in Florida”  available  on our Florida Child Injury Lawyer website.

Attorney James W. Dodson, working to make safety every child’s reality.

 Car accidents are THE MAJOR cause of childhood fatalities and injuries. Fifteen thousand (15,000) children die and over 1 million are injured in the U.S. yearly in motor vehicle accidents.

Children learn more from what we do than what we say! Here is a list of precautions you must insist upon when transporting your child:

SAFETY GUIDELINES:

1. Mom’s lap is unsafe. In a collision, a child could be crushed between the adult and the auto interior. Even if the adult is wearing a safety belt, a child could be wrenched from her arms in a collision. Also, never put a seatbelt around both you and a child, or even two children.
2. All car doors must be locked. Engage door handle locks (if your vehicle is equipped with them) if you’re riding with small children. These devices prevent rear seat passengers from opening the rear doors from the inside.
3. Children must never be loose in the front seat and, most importantly, never stand in the front seat. It is impossible to prevent a child, who is sitting beside you, from being flung forward by extending your arm during a crash. In a 20 mph crash, an unrestrained 25 lb. baby has a weight equivalent to 500 pounds!
4. Children must never be unrestrained in the cargo section of a station wagon or let loose to run around inside a van or SUV. Also, NEVER let anyone ride in the bed of a pickup truck, even one with a tarp or shell.
5. Children should sit in the back seat. If a child has no choice and must sit in the front seat with a passenger air bag present, always use a car seat, booster seat or seatbelt (whichever is appropriate), and have the passenger seat as far back as it can go. If the car has an airbag that can be deactivated on the passenger side, do so before placing your child in the front seat. Never put an infant less than 1 year of age in the front passenger seat of a vehicle with a passenger side airbag that cannot be deactivated.
6. EVERYONE in the vehicle must buckle up. An unrestrained adult is a poor role model and can be thrown into others causing serious or fatal injuries.

The world’s first rear-seat inflatable seat belts are being introduced by the Ford Motor Company.

Steve Rouhana, senior technical leader for safety at Ford, states that inflatable seat belts are a way to get benefits of air bags, but without the risks of swift forceful deployment.

In addition, Rouhana says it’s expected that the devices will provide more safety for children who can be more vulnerable in a crash. The seat belt will expand during an accident to cover more of a child’s torso, helping to reduce head, neck and chest injuries. In 2010, the inflatable seat belts will be offered as an option on the Ford Explorer, and added to other models later.

The inflatable seat belt’s thicker edge and padded feeling should also make it more comfortable in everyday use. The automaker hopes this will help increase the use of rear seat belts. Today, only 61 percent of rear seat passengers buckle up, compared with 82 percent of front seat passengers, according to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The Dodson Law Firm urges all drivers and passengers, young and old to wear seat belts for their protection and for the protection of those they love.