Personal Injury Lawyers > Personal Injury Blog > Child Car Seats > Study Indicates Children In Car Seats May Be at Risk of Injuries

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Study Indicates Children In Car Seats May Be at Risk of Injuries

A new study reveals that children who have been restrained in a car seat may be able to unlock their restraints.  This could pose serious injuries to these children in the event of an accident.  What’s worse is that the study found that even one-year-old children were able to unbuckle their restraints quite easily.

The study was conducted by researchers at Yale University School of Medicine.   The idea for the research came because of injuries sustained by parents who were involved in car accidents when they became distracted by their child unbuckling a seatbelt, and looked away from the road.  The researchers found that most children below the age of four can unbuckle their seat belts this quite easily.  Not so surprisingly, boys seemed to have the most enthusiasm for unlocking seat belts.  More than 40% of the children who unbuckled seat belts did so while the car was in motion.

The questions were posed to parents in more than 500 surveys that were handed over across Connecticut.   The findings of the study will be presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies meeting in Denver over the weekend.  What makes this a great challenge that these children are too small to understand the importance of being secured in a car seat and not unbuckle their seat belts.

The fact that so many children of such a young age were able to unbuckle seatbelts  easily, is enough to make Los Angeles personal injury attorneys call for the re-evaluation of current car seat designs.  We need enhanced design that allows parents to secure a child in a car seat easily, while making it difficult for a child to unbuckle himself or herself.

Car safety seats need to be engineered better in order to prevent children from unbuckling their seat belts.  Besides, automakers could also look into the development of an alarm that could warn parents if the child manages to unbuckle his seatbelt.  Not only are children in unsecured and defective car safety seats at a high risk of injuries when the car is involved in an accident, but when children manage to unbuckle seatbelts, it can distract parents’ attention from the road.  Parents may be at a much higher risk of being involved in an accident.

There is no doubt that car safety seats have been a major factor in the declining rate of accident fatalities involving children over the past five years.  Moreover, car safety seat usage has boomed among Americans.  However, it is important to make sure that the child is restrained in a car safety seat that is equipped for his age and weight.  It’s also important to secure your child in a car seat or booster seat depending on his weight.  An unsafe or age-inappropriate booster seat or car safety seat may actually end up doing more harm than good.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of personal injuries in Los Angeles. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire to discuss a personal injury matter,  you can reach us at (909) 657-0576 or email us.

The Reeves Law Group is not representing any party in the matters discussed in this posting.

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