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Keeping Our Kids Safe: A Review of Child Safety Inside Cars, Including Proper Installation of Car Safety Seats and Other Alternative Safety Restraint Systems

By: Richard N. Shapiro, HSCLA attorney

Properly Installing a Car Safety Seat

This is a continuing series of articles about keeping our kids safe while they are in our cars. The installation of a car safety seat involves several aspects: 1) A shoulder harness, 2) A locking clip, and 3) A top tether strap. A shoulder harness clip should be adjusted at approximately arm pit level or above and this assures that the shoulder harness will remain around the level of the child’s shoulders when the child is sitting in the car seat in a collision. A locking clip secures the seat belt in vehicles when an automatic locking retractor is not used which applies to vehicles before 1996. What is called the “top tether” does not get used with many forward facing car safety seats, but using it helps reduce the chance of a child being forced out of the car safety seat and also can maintain the car safety seat in place.

If you are a parent you probably know that since every car is different reading a car safety seat manual and trying to figure out exactly how it should be installed in your particular car is not an easy exercise. There are over 50 types of car safety seats and they often have different types methods of attachment. There are even clinics to help learn to apply car safety seats of various types to various types of cars. If a car is in a crash lawyers called this the “dynamic phase”
of the car safety seat or restraint system meaning that during the crash what happens to this restraint system is a key liability issue. Naturally, a properly installed car safety seat should not let a child be ejected. Keeping the frame of the car safety seat firmly attached to the seat back or seat is of great importance. And the child’s head should not whip left or right and hit some protruding hard plastic part of the car seat itself either.

Let’s Review The Basics

1. Children one year of age and younger weighing 20 pounds or less should go in rear facing infant seats and the best position is the center of the rear seat. However, placing children of this age in the front seat exposes the child to the air bag. Placing these small children in forward facing car safety seats in the rear seats of the cars can cause serious neck injuries or paralysis. The infants neck is not formed well enough to prevent these types of whiplash injuries that can be life threatening. These infants also are so small that is it important that the shoulder harness clips be applied properly on the car safety seat. Never use these products if the parts are missing or broken.
2. For children that are ages 1 to 4, they should be placed in the car safety seat as well. The “toddler type seats” are for forward facing children up to about 40 pounds. For a convertible type seat, for the rearward facing infant it is used up to 20 or 30 pounds and then forward facing ranges from 20-40 pounds so the instructions for the car safety seat must be carefully checked.
3. For children ages 5 to 12 the dangers are almost the worst because there are so many different instructions from different car safety seat manufacturers. The problem is that some kids that have just barely out grown car safety seats really don’t fit properly in a seat belt that is designed for adult use.

Most victims lawyers contend that the automobile/car manufacturers have known for over 20 years that even the adult safety restraint systems must be designed to work with small children that may not require a car safety seat. This is a contentious area of litigation. Certainly there has been a long history of motor vehicle/car crashes where the manufacturers have been aware that kids do not have properly fitting restraint systems and often little children will put the shoulder harness under their arm pit because there is no other way for it to fit properly.

Unbelievably integrated seat belts or belts to seat an adjustable shoulder harness anchors have only been recently required by the NHTSA . In 1994 a Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (208) was amended and requires that seat belts installed for adjustable seats be integrated and equipped with means for adjustment. However, NHTSA did not include in this standard the fixed rear seats which are more commonly used by children.

Booster Seats Have Many Dangers

With the typical type of low shield booster seat, an after market product, there are many hidden dangers. They have no upper torso protection for the child. In a sudden motor vehicle crash, a chid’s upper body suddenly moves out and over the shield suddenly forcing forward the head, neck and torso of a child. The spinal cord can stretch and a myriad of different types of injuries, many life threatening--can be caused. Once a child reaches over about 40 pounds many of the manufacturers direct the parent to use the car’s lap and shoulder belt system which is actually better but a shoulder harness may not fit a small child in the right position.

The Dangers of Air Bags For Children

The NHTSA web site analyzed at least 12 cases where there were child fatalities even in rear facing child car safety seats when air bags have deployed. Many of these were caused by skull fracture or brain injuries from the blow where the air bag suddenly deployed and collided with the back of the car seat which transmits a force to the infant’s head. The air bag can even break or fracture the plastic of the car safety seat. This is the reason why the NHTSA now recommends that all children under 12 go into the rear seats of vehicles for this and for various other safety reasons discussed above. There is an organization called CIREN (crash injury research and engineering network) which is a government funded organization which gathers information on accidents in which children are involved. Various reports have been made by this group which includes collaboration of clinicians and engineers in academic positions, as well as industry and government experts. CIREN’s mission is to improve the prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation of motor vehicle crash injuries in an effort to reduce injury and death to children in car wrecks.

Other information that may be helpful to a person looking into whether a child has been injured because of some type of defect, malfunction or problem with a car safety seat or a restraint system in a car is the Center For Auto Safety, and also read the other articles on this site under the series of articles “Keeping Our Kids Safe.”

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Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton, P.C.
1294 Diamond Springs Road
Virginia Beach, VA 23455

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