Today was a monumental occasion. I took my youngest daughter's booster seat out of the car for good! So, unless they change the law to 8 years and 80 lbs like some advocates have been pushing, I am car seat free.I'm feeling a little melancholy. It went so fast. So, here's my tribute to car seats.
As a side note, I didn't learn how to put the car seat in properly until I had my second child. Apparently, I'm not alone. According to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, only 15% of children in safety seats were correctly harnessed into correctly installed seats (Taft 1999). Luckily, we were never in a situation where it mattered. Sometimes, I do miss the good old days when you could just fill up your station wagon with kids and not worry about it.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, from 1975 through 2002, an estimated 6,567 lives were saved by the use of child restraints (child safety seats or adult belts).
Another benefit of car seats is that young children stay where you put them. I remember crawling all over the car as a kid, back and forth over the seats.
Related Tags: car seat safety
5 comments:
I think strapping them in is one of the major benefits. If we have the option of travelling by train or car, the car wins because the children will be strapped in for the journey and we can all listen to a book or they can play games.
That also helps safety, with less chance of movement based mischief.
Mo-oh-om! He's touching me! Make him stop touching me!
...
Mom! He's touching me again! Stop touching me! Move your leg!
No, you move your leg!
...
Mo-oh-om! He's (smack!)
(smack)
...
Stop looking at me! Mo-oh-om! He's looking at me!
...
Ah, yes. I remember well the days of car trips with my brother. Note that I didn't say I remember them fondly....
Some of my family vacations looked like that too.
It is interesting how the seating laws are different. Until 2005, Connecticut did not require booster seats, just infant/baby/todder seats for children under 40 lbs. Now we have a law for age 7 or 70 lbs whichever comes last.
My car owner's manual says when they can sit in the car with their knees over the edge of the seat (so legs hang straight down) then they are big enough to sit in just the regular car's seat.
Thin children could be in the booster for a very long time even though their bodies are the right height to make it safe.
I find it very interesting that when the government tries to put a definition on something it never works out just right. In other words, perhaps a chubby young (5 or 6 year old, some I know that age are already over 70 lbs.) and short child could go without a booster while a very thin 10 or 11 year old would still have to use one.
My older son was so excited to dump the booster as the real car's seat is more comfortable.
My pet peeve is the people who don't even get it right, about the straps on the infant seat! They can't even snap them in correctly. My owner manual said more than one finger's space of slack is too much. Also that handle is supposed to be in the down position while driving yet I see babies in cars on the road with the darned thing up.
It was trick to get the baby seat in properly. From what I understand, police stations and fire stations across the country will help any family, free of charge, to teach and demonstrate how to put in the seat properly. It always took me sitting in it or a man exerting great pressure with his arm to push it in and down enough before latching the seat belt to get it in so that it didn't slide...
Okay that is enough rambling from me...
The other thing is that not all car seats can safely fit in all cars.
Bucket seats and things like that can make a difference.
We got a rental car and rented the car seat. The car seat could not be installed into the car with out using something else to like a rolled up towel under the seat to stabalize it.
I was so annoyed. The guys working at the rental agency just gave us a blank look.
We ended up putting it in the middle back seat and used all three seat belts to keep the carseat from leaning to one side or the other.
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