Florida Child Injury Law Blog

Posts Tagged ‘unsafe’

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.

Tampa Mom, Katie Guice, was concerned about the potential dangers the unsafe playground equipment at her neighborhood park posed for her young son.  A sign posted at  the entrance of Ballast Point Park warns parents that a fall to a hard surface from the playground equipment could lead to death for a child. Parents have reported incidents of  fall accidents on the playground.

This was troubling to Guice whose  three year old son, Rylan, enjoys playing with his friend at the park on equipment intended for older children (ages 5-14), not toddlers like Rylan.

A recent post to our Florida Child Injury website describes this young Mom’s determination and efforts to gather local community support  and to provide a safe and  developmentally appropriate  area for toddlers to run and play.