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Health & Fitness

Is Your Child Buckled Up?

1 in 4 parents are skipping the car seat and putting their kids at risk

For the overwhelming majority of us, buckling up before putting the car in drive is as common place as tying our shoes before taking that first step or brushing our teeth immediately after getting out of bed. Survey your colleagues, neighbors and friends and you’re likely to hear, “I always buckle up and make sure my passengers do, too.”   

There’s no denying the lifesaving value of proper restraint. Seat belts reduce the risk of fatal injury to front-seat passenger vehicle occupants by 45 percent and the risk of moderate-to-critical injury by 50 percent. They’re credited with saving 12,546 lives in 2010. Child safety seats, meanwhile, help our most vulnerable motor vehicle occupants ride down the forces of a crash. They’re credited with saving 10,000 lives between 1975 and 2011, with more than 260 lives saved in 2011 alone.    

Knowing this, I was floored by a new report from Safe Kids Worldwide that found one in four parents admit to having driven without securing their children in a car seat or booster seat. What is particularly troubling is that more affluent parents, parents with higher levels of education and young parents are more likely to make exceptions when it comes to buckling up their kids every trip.  Men were also more willing than women to bend the rules. 

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The survey asked parents if it was acceptable for a child to ride unrestrained in a vehicle in certain circumstances including driving a short distance, if the car or booster seat was missing, during overnight travel, as a reward for the child, or if they chose to hold the child in their lap. To quote the Safe Kids press release, “the results were staggering.”   

Twenty-one percent of parents said it was acceptable to drive with their child unrestrained if they’re not driving far. Some parents (16 percent) feel it’s acceptable to allow children to ride unrestrained on overnight trips. Nearly a quarter (23 percent) of younger parents (ages 18-29) said it would be acceptable to ride with a child unrestrained when traveling overnight compared to 13 percent of older parents (ages 30-49). And more than one in four (27 percent) parents said it would be acceptable for short rides compared to 19 percent of older parents.  

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What these parents fail to realize is that 60 percent of crashes involving children occur 10 minutes or less from home. As for overnight trips, this is the time period when children are most likely to be injured in a crash. 

Equally troubling is that one in three (34 percent) parents with household incomes of $100,000 or higher, said it was acceptable to leave their child unrestrained if they’re not driving a far distance, compared to 15 percent of parents making less than $35,000. Meanwhile, parents with graduate degrees are twice as likely to say it’s acceptable to drive without buckling up their children compared to parents with a high school education, particularly when they’re in a rush (20 percent compared to 10 percent).   

Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for children.  In 2011, 679 children ages 12 and under died on the nation’s roadways. A third of these children (221) were riding without a child safety seat or seat belt that could have saved their lives. In addition, older children are more often unrestrained in fatal car crashes compared to their younger counterparts.   

Buckling up, every ride, every trip is essential. Parents who fail to properly secure their children in the appropriate child restraint are sending a powerful message to kids that it’s not important to buckle up. And as these unrestrained children age, there’s a good bet they won’t fasten their seat belt when their teens. That’s troubling since teens have the lowest seat belt use rate of any age group on the road and the highest crash risk. 

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