Child Car Seat Safety

Few hospitals or birth centers will allow a baby to leave without checking to make sure a carseat is installed and the parents know how to use it. Babies need to ride in carseats facing toward the rear until they are both one year old and twenty pounds. When both of these requirements are met, the infant seat can be replaced with a forward-facing model until the child is four years old and forty pounds. After the child reaches this size, carseats are optional but it is still safer to provide some type of restraint in addition to the car's seat belts. You may wish to keep your child in the carseat as long as possible, or provide a booster seat.

It can be tempting for parents to let children ride in the car without the carseat. The child may cry and scream, or find a way to escape the restraints. Or the parent may simply consider that since it's a short drive, nothing will happen. This practice is not only illegal, but it also puts your child's life in serious danger. You are just as likely to be involved in a traffic accident during a short drive to the store as you would on a long road trip. Children who aren't in carseats become missiles in the event of a crash, often sustaining fatal injuries in a fairly minor collision. A parent's arms are never an adequate restraint - in fact, the child may be even more likely to be injured in a parent's lap than sitting alone. Children may open windows and doors and fall out of a moving car. They're also a major distraction to the driver.

Establish rules that your child must follow to ride in the car, if he's prone to escape. Even if you need to be somewhere, the rules must be obeyed and the car must stop immediately if the child won't stay in his seat. Listening to a child cry and scream for the entire drive can be hard to handle, but this will likely subside over time as the child learns that it's not optional. Employ techniques of discipline and reward for riding in the carseat just as you would for other issues, and provide lots of distraction with snacks, toys, and music.

Simply owning and using a carseat, of course, is no guarantee of your child's safety. The seat must be properly installed. Children should always sit in the back seat of the car, especially if the front seat has airbags. Fatalities have occurred during minor collisions when an airbag deploys against a child in a carseat. The car seat belts holding the seat should be extremely tight - put your own weight on the seat to make it tighter. The seat should not move or rock at all when properly installed. If it does, either it's not tight enough or the seat may not be compatible with your car. Most stores will gladly exchange your seat with another model if this is the case. If your car has seatbelts with shoulder straps, a locking clip is required to secure the carseat properly. This clip is usually included with carseats, but if not, can be purchased for about five dollars at stores that sell baby accessories and sometimes at car dealerships. It clips the shoulder strap to the lap belt so there will be no movement in the strap after it's fed through the carseat. If you're not sure how to install your carseat, stop by your neighborhood police station and someone will be happy to help.

Carseats are not inexpensive, but if you don't use one, you're taking a huge gamble with your child's life. For any child under the age of four and weighing less than forty pounds, riding in a carseat is not optional no matter how much the child may protest. Even a minor collision can cause major injury to a child who is not properly restrained. Make sure you're using the correct type of seat and don't rush the desire to turn your baby's seat to a forward-facing position before he's ready. Install it properly and tightly, and if you need help or just a check to make sure it's done correctly, visit the police station for assistance.