Although many of us have fond memories of rattling around in the back of the family station wagon, what we didn't know then is that riding that way was the number one cause of death for children. And now it's even more dangerous out on the road.While the number of motor vehicle injuries and deaths has been declining as more people use seat belts and car seats, the number of crashes continues to go up every year because there are more cars than ever on the road — and auto crashes are still the leading cause of death in children over age 3. Making matters worse, kids these days spend a lot more time in cars than they used to.
Luckily, we have seat belts to keep us safe. The problem is, seat belts designed to fit adult bodies don't hold our children securely.
That's where booster seats come in. A booster seat does exactly what the name suggests: It boosts your child up so that your vehicle's lap and shoulder belts restrain her safely. Without a booster seat, an adult seat belt can actually cause injury in the event of a crash rather than preventing it.
If the lap belt rests on your child's tummy (which it's likely to do without a booster), for instance, she could suffer stomach, liver, or spleen damage in a crash. And if the shoulder belt rests against her neck rather than her chest, she may try to move it under her arm (where it could crack her ribs and damage internal organs) or behind her back (where it offers no protection at all against head, neck, and spinal injuries). These considerations are serious enough that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration now recommends that all children who've outgrown their car seat continue to ride in a booster seat until they're at least 8 years old and 4 feet 9 inches tall.
What's more, strapping your child into a booster seat may well be the law in your state. Arkansas, California, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Washington have all enacted laws that require children under age 6 (or those who weigh less than 60 pounds) to ride in appropriate car or booster seats; New Jersey enacted a law requiring proper restraints for kids under 8 who weigh less than 80 pounds. Safety experts hope that other states will soon follow suit. (To find out exactly what your state requires, go to the National Safe Kids Campaign Web site and click on the state-by-state guide on the right side of the page.)
There's plenty of justification for the increasing calls for booster seats: In 2000, 248,000 kids were injured in car crashes and 1,668 children died. Most of them weren't properly restrained, which means that booster seats could have prevented many of those deaths. And while you may assume that most of these tragedies resulted from fiery highway collisions, the truth is that 75 percent of car accidents happen within 25 miles of home, and 60 percent of them happen on streets where the speed limit is 40 mph or less.
Of course you want your child to travel safely. The trick is to avoid those "we're just going to the grocery store" lapses, says Stephanie Tombrello, executive director of the nonprofit child passenger safety organization SafetyBeltSafe U.S.A. "Ask yourself, 'If I were in a crash right now, how would I want my child to be riding?'" Then make sure your child rides this way every day.
Since convenience is obviously a big issue for time-crunched parents, Tombrello recommends coming up with an approach that's simple and consistent, so that it becomes automatic. If your family has two cars, for example, you'll make things much easier on yourself if you pony up for two booster seats and leave one in each car, rather than trying to move one seat back and forth all the time — a step that's likely to fall by the wayside on especially frantic mornings.
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