When was the last time you gave way to your child’s whim of sitting in the front seat of your car? Well, that literally ought to be the ‘last time’ you let your child sit beside the driver’s seat.
A research sponsored by The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, the American Academy of Pediatrics and State Farm, stated that children were safer in the rear seat of a car in the event of a car accident as compared to the front seat. In fact, possibilities of getting injured in a crash were significantly reduced if a child sat in the back seat and duly used the seat belt. States like Illinois have gone a step ahead in ensuring children’s car safety by introducing booster seat laws along with specific seat belt laws for children.
The research has received funds of about $20 million by The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, the American Academy of Pediatrics and State Farm since the launch of the study of children victimized in vehicle crashes in 1997. 370,000 and above State Farm policyholders who had faced such crashes, provided the necessary information for this study which is slated for release today.
Dr. Flaura Winston, a chief investigator of the study spoke about the importance of children sitting in the rear seat and said, “The single most important lifesaving decision parents can make for their child is to use the rear seat and age- and size-appropriate restraints during every car ride, every time.”
Analysts confirmed that making children sit in the back seat of a car and fastening seat belts could have avoided at least 1000 serious injuries out of the 3,665 grave injury cases recorded amongst children aged less than 16 in car accidents. Furthermore, the research clearly denoted that about one third of the 1,800 children killed in car accidents in 2003 had been sitting in the front seat of the vehicle. Even worse, more than 50% of them hadn’t secured themselves with seat belts.
Dr Winston specified the major causes of front seat accidents, saying that children were highly prone to injuries in the front seat of a car mainly by passenger airbags and sudden smashes into solid dashboards and tough windshields. Although passenger airbags are supposed to be safety restraints in a vehicle to avoid frontal injuries and have also decreased the amount of adult injuries by 18 percent in frontal accidents along with reducing 11 percent adult injuries in all types of crashes, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety notified that contact of children with airbags conversely raised the chances of death for children, especially for those below 10 years of age, by at least 34 percent.
The research, thereby, accentuated the significance of parents purchasing cars that offered child safe facilities like lap-and-shoulder seat belts attached to the center rear seat, adaptable rear seat shoulder belts, built-in seats for child security, as well as LATCH, i.e. Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children, which let parents set up safety seats for their child without having to use the seat belts.
The report, finally, suggested that the use of big and sturdy cars like minivans, large passenger cars and big SUVs would render greater safety to children, than light and fragile small cars, like small SUVs, frail sports cars and compact pickup trucks, which were highly vulnerable to even minor crashes.
