I was excited to see that an automobile manufacturer had weighed in on car seats and child safety. One facet of the argument we make against the efficacy of child car seats is that government standards for car seats cut the automakers out of the safety loop to some degree, creating some misaligned incentives between regulators, automakers, and car seat manufacturers.
According to this article in the Australian newspaper The Age, the Swedish automaker Volvo has found a number of shortcomings with existing car-seat practices. Its recommendations are based on “independent crash tests and investigations of more than 4,500 crashes involving children,” and argue that:
Young children are much safer facing the rear of the car and should ride that way until age three or four (as they commonly do in Sweden), rather than facing forward starting at six months or one year. “[C]hildren should be in booster seats until at least age 10 to ensure seatbelts are positioned correctly across their chests without riding up to their necks.” “Current child seats require feeding the seatbelt and attaching a top tether, something that takes time and is often not performed properly. An RACV report in 2004 estimated that child seats were incorrectly fitted as much as 70 per cent of the time.”
All that said, there was no word about Volvo pushing for a further integration of child-safety measures into the cars themselves, hopefully obviating the need for an add-on piece of equipment made by a third party which has been shown to provide minimal benefit.
But I suppose it is a step forward nonetheless that an automaker is speaking out on child safety. That is not necessarily an easy thing to do. You may recall that when Robert S. McNamara (yes, the same one) tried to push Ford to install seat belts in its cars in the 1950′s, Ford feared that “selling safety” was bad for business in that it reminded people that cars were inherently unsafe.
(Hat tip: Kevin Hayes and Ben Glasson.)
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Wouldn’t *everyone* be safer if they rode facing backwards?
Put a camera out the front of the car so the driver can view it on a screen. Change the steering wheel linkage a bit so it makes sense to the driver watching the screen. This could definitely work for people who grew up learning to drive on game simulators.
Travelling backwards often makes car-sickness worse. It does for me, and I wouldn’t want to forcibly put small children through that on every journey (or clear up after them).
The US history of regulation of automotive safety is sad — or infuriating. Safety improvements that have been widely available elsewhere in the world for years – even decades – are yet to be required here.
A case in point – during the nineties American automobiles were engineered with car seat tether anchors so they could be sold in other countries. But although the cars sold in the US had the anchors, the tethers hold car sets to the anchors weren’t installed and were not promoted by our government. And the superiority of tethers and of car seats with ‘hard’ connections was well-demonstrated in the literature and practice in other countries. Where were our government ‘safety’ agencies responsible for protecting child passengers?
Mercedes and Volvo have led the way in engineering for safety – you don’t need to be an automotive engineer to see how superior their vehicles are – and have been for a long time.
And if that’s not bad enough, American vehicles have factory-installed distractions – hot spots, DVD players, etc., etc., even though we have known for years that distraction is a major contributing factor to crash causation.
Where are our safety regulators? Whose interests are being protected?
The rear-facing position is recommended because the majority of collisions involve the car running into something.
When the car runs into something, a child in a rear-facing seat is pressed further into the seat, giving support to the large head.
A rear facing seat would provide less protection when the car is struck from the rear, or has spun around and slid backwards into an object — but that occurs less frequently than front-end collisions. (And even in a rear-end collision, only one of the cars is hit from the rear. . .)
Staring at a seatback for 30 minutes twice a day can’t be any worse for child development than staring at a TV screen playing brief segments of a DVD during every 5 minute drive. In fact, it might encourage a child to sing, make up stories, or develop some other skills for amusing herself until she has adult interaction. Children who never experience empty spaces don’t learn how to cope with them. . .
If you scroll down you can see a five year old rear-facing:
http://www.car-seat.org/showthread.php?t=101765
There is definitely a movement here in the US for extended rear-facing (ERF) and seats are now being made that allow rear-facing to 40+ pounds. But there are still plenty of pediatricians who will say, “Now you can turn their car seat around!” at the child’s 12 month exam. Until that changes the movement will not get far.
We adults are accustomed to riding forward-facing, I bet most of us never were even rear-facing as infants. Until a child is turned forward facing they really aren’t going to know the difference.
The trouble is that the parents who are passionate enough to know about the benefits of ERF are the same ones that are installing seats correctly–forwards or backwards. So the people who haven’t taken the time to install their seats the right way are the ones turning their kiddos around at 12 months.
I read ALL THE TIME that child car seats are installed incorrectly the overwhelming majority of the time.
But not once do I recall any specifics. What do we do wrong? What are the common mistakes?
It would be quite a bit more helpful if I knew what to look out for. With our last child, we took advantage of a police program to make sure the seat was properly installed, but they didn’t seem to do anything I wouldn’t have done anyway.
When my daughter was born, I had a friend who was very serious about car safety teach me how to install the seat properly. My wife then took the seat to a fire department “car seat check” where they told her it was “the best installation they had ever seen.”
However, they decided to uninstall and re-install it to show my wife how to properly install it. When I returned home, I discovered that the fire department hadn’t installed it properly – the seat could easily slide 2-3 inches each way, could be lifted off the seat, etc.
Improper installation is clearly an issue, and even groups that claim to know how to teach you don’t always do it correctly.
Charlie and others, the child seats for sale in Scandinavia are actually very different from the ones for sale in the US (I just recently returned from the states).
The ones for sale here are designed in a way that leaves space between the back seat and the front of the child’s seat, giving room for the feet. There is a base and the seat itself is mounted on top of the base and can be moved forward or backwards to accomodate different child sizes.