Blog:Safe Kids Has News

Posted by: Lorrie Walker at Sep 24, 2011 12:00 AM CDT

Keywords: Education

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New Car Seat Study

I am excited to report that Safe Kids USA has released a new study of 79,000 car seats inspected over a one year period in 2009-2010.

All inspections were conducted by certified Child Passenger Safety Technicians. We looked at some of the things many people get wrong when they install a car seat for their child. We recorded how well parents and caregivers did relative to picking the right car seat for their child’s age, weight and height; whether it was facing the correct direction; whether the seat belt or LATCH system was used correctly to anchor the car seat into the car and whether the harness was used properly.

The information was collected when families drove into one of our events or inspection stations. We did the study because it had been such a long time since the last government research was completed and we wanted to know if we were getting better, staying the same or doing worse at using restraints for kids.

What we found showed us that we are making some progress. Parents are successful at keeping kids in a back seat until age 13, they are using their car seats facing the correct direction for the child’s age, height and weight, very few car seats were on a recall list or expired, and few had been in crashes. The best news was that many children (but not nearly enough) are remaining in a rear-facing position after age one and 20 pounds; children are riding in harnessed seats even when in the past they were already riding in booster seats and kids who used to ride in seat belts alone were still riding in booster seats.

The numbers are not yet a majority but we are moving in the right direction. Remember, this data was collected before the big announcement in March 2011 from the American Academy of Pediatrics (keyword: car safety seats) that gave all three of those messages a big boost in the media.

I am optimistic that we will keep making progress through the good work of the child passenger safety technicians, better laws for children, strong messaging to parents/caregivers and products that have better, clearer text and more pictures in the instructions.

If you are now finding it easier to use your car seat after you went to an inspection or event, let me know at lwalker@safekids.org. We are counting on you to tell your family, friends and co-workers about child passenger safety.

More About Child Passenger Safety

Comment on this Blog Post:

Posted by Kerry Chausmer at: October 9, 2012

We are so glad you are interested in becoming a CPST! You'll find more information at http://cert.safekids.org under the BE A TECH tab. There is a box on the right that says FIND A COURSE. You can search by course type=Certification and your state. If there isn't one listed near you, courses are added regularly by Instructors so check back.

Posted by David Warner at: October 4, 2012

im real curious on how to be certified in carseat safey. if anyone knows, please inform me on where to start. I would love to began helping kids. thanks.

Posted by kirth pin at: December 20, 2011

It would be good to know the percentage of checkforms received by Safe Kids were complete enough to use for the data 79,000 car seat evaluation.

Posted by Joseph Boyd Tong at: October 8, 2011

The report is very interesting. It would be good to know the percentage of checkforms received by Safe Kids were complete enough to use for the data 79,000 car seat evaluation.