Safe Kids Clark County News Articles
Written on Thursday, February 3rd, 2005
Child Passenger Safety Week - February 13-19
It's time to take the mystery and misconceptions out of child passenger safety. Over 80 percent of car seats are used incorrectly, often with grim consequences. Motor vehicle crashes are the leading killer of children under 14, and the best way to keep your child from becoming a statistic is to use an appropriate car seat or booster seat for every trip.
No excuse will bring back a dead child. Just going around the corner? Most crashes occur on short trips close to home and on low-speed roads, not highways. You'll hold your child tightly in your arms? Holding a 10-pound baby in a 40-mph crash is like jumping out a window holding a 400-pound weight. You're the best driver in the world? That just means you're sharing the road with worse drivers.
February 13-19 is Child Passenger Safety Week. SAFE KIDS Clark County will be inspecting car seats and teaching parents and caregivers how to use them properly.
Properly used, a car seat reduces the risk of injury by 71 percent for rear-facing infants and 54 percent for forward-facing toddlers. SAFE KIDS volunteers will teach you to install it, but it's your responsibility to use it every time your child gets in the car. An inspection is free and usually takes 20 to 30 minutes; it's a great way to learn how to secure your child effectively, but it's not installation while you wait. Think of it as a private lesson in the correct use of your car seat with your child in your vehicle.
Why not just let the experts do it for you? Because you will occasionally need to remove a car seat and reinstall it later — to clean the car interior, to make room for adult passengers when your child is not in the car, or to transport your child in a relative's car or a rental car. You need to adjust the seat's harness straps as your child grows, and for some restraint systems, adjustments are made on the back of the seat. You need to know how to install your child's seat, and a technician's role is to show you how to do it right.
When you go to a car seat check, bring your vehicle owner's manual and everything that came with your seat — especially the instructions — and bring your child. (If you're expecting your first baby, our volunteers will demonstrate the correct use of restraints.)
Be sure to visit our Events page to see all of our scheduled events.
Child Passenger Safety Technicians do not make recommendations about specific brands or models of car seats or booster seats. A technician will help you determine what kind of passenger restraint is most appropriate for your child — a rear-facing infant seat, a convertible seat, a forward-facing seat, a backless or high-backed booster seat or safety belts — but in each of those categories, every model on the market in the United States has passed the same crash tests and meets the same federal standards.
A car seat might not look complicated, and indeed, most of them are easy to use once you?ve been shown a few pointers. An inspection will make sure you?re not among the parents who are driving their children around insufficiently protected. Please take the time to learn how to secure your child in your car, and do it every time you drive your child anywhere.