Any one out there have cites for studies on baby car seats and lives saved? Why it really is significantly safer to use a baby car seat?
Just to explain, I’m an American and live in China with a 10 month old daughter. Of course, I know it is safer for kids to be in a properly installed car seat. Just like to have some proof to back me up a bit. My Chinese relatives all disagree and think the safest place is in Mom’s arms. There is an almost inevitable battle every time we take a taxi and I drag along the baby seat and make sure it is used for the entire trip. I’m tired of the pressure of “no one in Shanghai uses a baby seat and besides people don’t drive very fast in the city”, so I will buy a car, install the baby seat myself, and hire a driver to ensure my daughter drives nowhere unless buckled into her seat.
I have some professional knowledge of the requirements for a range of safety items including child restraints. I am aware of cases where the car has been a write-off (including a case or two where the rest of the passengers were killed) and the infant in the child restraint survived, but I doubt that my unsupported word will be of assistance to you!
Try a Google search using the term ‘child restraint effectiveness’. If you get too many hits, limit it to Australia and/or New Zealand. Aus has had mandatory child restraints and top tether systems (only just in in the US now) for a long time, plus more stringent requirements for the child restraints. (eg tougher Standards and mandatory compliance with those Standards). NZ is not far behind.
Or, for the short way, the following links may be of help.
http://www.swsahs.nsw.gov.au/livtrauma/public/injprevent/childrest.asp
http://www4.tpgi.com.au/users/aoaug/cr_paper/cr_tests.html
The type of restraint the child needs will vary with the age and size of the child. Baby capsules are needed for the under 6 monthers, and in Aus may be hired for the period if you don’t wish to buy one. After that, it pretty well goes on the child’s weight and size. The child needs a bigger restraint once the halfway point of the bulge at the back of the skull is above the top of the restraint. For a child of ordinary growth, in **very **general terms, this would mean a baby capsule (0 - 6 months), a child restraint (6 months to 3 to 4 years) and a booster seat (3 to 4 years to 6 to 8 years).
We’ve taken our daughters seat overseas with us for use in taxis and hirecars. Damn thing will need a passport soon!
Here’s a site that says that in 1998, 299 kids under 5 were saved by safety seats. That doesn’t sound like much (and I wonder how it was compiled), but if you’re holding a baby in your arms, especially in the front seat, and you hit something, even at low speed, the baby is going to go splat on the dashboard or windshield. I think there are a lot of minor incidents that aren’t even reported where a baby in someone’s arms would be in a lot of danger, but one in a car seat would be fine.
If you want to convince your relatives, try to get some detailed numbers about how much force a baby exerts on someone’s arms when a car stops suddenly. It’s way too much force for anyone’s arms to stop, even at fairly low speeds.
Haha, the title of this thread made me immediately think of China where drivers themselves are suicidal and merely being a pedestrian is just as risky.
While I agree that safety measures are good things I think this can be taken too far. I have no kids of my own but if I did I would not have a problem letting them ride in a car without a baby seat if the circumstances demanded it. I do not think this is such a bad thing as the PC crowd make it sound. They make it sound like it would be equivalent to DUI. I don’t agree.
Personally I get much more upset when I see kids with parents who smoke. But, on the whole, I believe parents should have certain freedom to make these decisions.
If I had a child, of course I would have a seat. But a child in a seat in China is at much more danger than one in the US without one. Gimme a break.
If, for whatever reason, the seat was not available, I believe as a parent I should have the freedom to decide if the child should ride or not. I think saying “we have to put off the trip to grandma’s because the seat is not available” is dumb.
I would preach to everyone to use the seats (and to stop smoking) but I am not sure it should be mandated by law. They are my kids, not the government’s.
I don’t have any statistics for you, but I vividly remember responding to car-tree collision where a grandma was holding her granddaughter on her lap, in the rear seat, both secured by the lap-shoulder belt. Both killed on impact. Granddaughter would have survived if she had been in her car seat. Maybe grandma too.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, given the amount of time I spent researching my own car seat purchases and my rabid insistence on never moving the car one millimeter without Cranky Jr strapped in… but sailor has a good point. I didn’t have the cajones to bring this up in the Pit thread, because it’s too easy to be misconstrued and I do support carseat safety to the hilt. But, as sailor said, there are numerous health and safety risks to children. Car accidents are the ones that (for various reasons) we have landed on with both feet and have made A Big Public Deal. It’s gotten a lot of national play, so much so that (as many of us noted in the other Pit thread) many hospitals will not release a baby unless parents can prove they’ve got a infant seat ready.
But they don’t ask to see if the parents have past records of abuse. They don’t ask to see if the car’s brakes have been inspected. They don’t check the crib’s safety. They don’t give the parents anti-smoking literature, or promote breastfeeding all that strongly, or check to see if they’ve put the turpentine and lye out of reach at home.
I know the potential risks to unrestrained (or improperly restrained) children are gruesome to think about, but statistically I have read little to convince me that it is justified in being as visible a cause as it has become. I know I won’t take any chances, whatsoever, with Cranky Jr. in the car. It’s an issue of personal importance to me. But the parents who do take chances may not be putting their child at any more harm (statistically) than I am with some of my less-than-perfect parenting practices in other areas.
I guess this isn’t helpful from the standpoint of your question. But it’s entirely possible that while you are unequivocally right about the relative safety of a carseat over parental arms, your feelings about the importance of this issue might be more a function of a really great national public interest campaign in the U.S (and elsewhere) instead of a rational assessment of the risk to kids in cars.
I don’t think that using a baby as an air bag is a good idea.
Hope the following helps:
Child and Family Canada and the Canada Safety Council both say: “The correct use of a child restraint on every trip can prevent 75 per cent of crash-related deaths and serious injuries to child passengers.”
I’m going against the grain here folks.
My son (now 22) was three years old and not in a car seat when his Mom had to stand on the brakes when a car pulled out in front of her. Very low speed, but the boy ended up with a nasty bruise on his forehead. She took him to the doctor and thank God no permanent damage other than a bad headache. The Doc said we were very lucky that he was not badly injured.
Two weeks ago my daughter-in-law was in my pickup truck and had my four year old granddaugher with her. Kid was in a car seat. An jerk rear-ended her while she was sitting still. Her neck was sprained, but the kid was not injured.
I smoke (and that’s my business), but always wear a seatbelt. Being picked up from the highway after being ejected in a collision is no fun. Any kid in my vehicle will be in a car seat. If I see kids in other cars not in a car seat I will call the police.
I was thinking today that the only time in the last several years I have not worn a seatbelt was when the Grandaughter was with her mom and I in my small truck. We had a choice: put the kid in the car seat and we would not be able to buckle up, or we could buckle up and not put the kid in the car seat. Kids come first.
Garrison Keillor mentioned this in one of his Lake Wobegone stories. How, many years ago, he would drive with his young son driving standing (yikes!) on the passenger’s seat. He said “today, if I did that I would be considered worse than a criminal and nobody would talk to me… I would be sent for re-education to a school for bad daddies…”
So, I mean, I am with my kid at grandma’s and we can’t go home until a baby seat is available? I am all in favor of safety but come on. How many kids die each year in house fires? Should we make smoke alarms mandatory? (two years in jail if you forget to change the battery?) How about all sorts of domestic accidents which could easily be prevented. MAybe we should ban playgrounds too. And how about my pet peeve, smoking? Should we ban parents from smoking?
I do believe in health and safety etc but through education, not through coercion.
In China you see Mom and Pop and a couple of kids all riding on a tiny scooter in traffic I would not even dare drive a car in 
Actually, I wasn’t trying to start a debate, but just find out what quantitative information there is for lives saved.
Sailor, perhaps your view might change once you have a child. I fully support your right to not wear a seatbelt and kill your own silly ass. I’ve done much more stupid things. However, just a fender bender could easily kill an unprotected infant. To put any baby in a car without a safety seat is simply criminal endangerment. This is something obvious and preventable with a safety seat even though using said safety seat can be a real pain.
This is a seperate issue than say crib death. Not too many years ago, researchers figured out that putting infants 0-12 months to sleep on their backs instead of stomachs reduced the chance of crib death significantly (I believe by around 50%). It would be difficult to enforce legislation that parents must make their infants sleep on their backs.
Fireman, hope you’re not haunted by that scene. Loss of a child is one of the most difficult things a person can encounter, and the preventable loss of a child such as not bothering with a car seat would follow one to the grave.
I’m not haunted by the memory, but it does pop up at unexpected times. Unfortunately, I have seen worse, such as the 8 year old ejected from the car because he wasn’t seatbelted in. And others that I don’t really want to remember. Seat belts and car seats, used properly, do save lives.