Child Passenger Safety

Child safety seats and seat belts are essential for protecting your children in case of a car accident. To be effective, these child passenger safety devices must be used properly. As a driver, you are responsible for child passenger safety — make sure you understand how to keep kids safe while driving.

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Seat Belt Tips for Child Passenger Safety

• All children age 12 and under should be buckled up in the rear seat of the vehicle.
• Children should ride in an appropriate child safety seat until 8 years of age, unless they are 4 feet 9 inches tall and weigh 80 pounds.
• Holding a child in your lap provides no additional safety. An unrestrained 10-pound infant would instantly be ripped from an adult's arms in a 30-mph collision.
• Don't place a single seat belt over yourself and a child. In a front-end collision, the child could be crushed by your body.
• A seat belt must be adjusted to the size of a child. As with adults, the lap belt should cross the child's upper thighs and the diagonal belt should cross the upper chest and a point between the neck and the center of the shoulder.
• Children should continue to use a belt-positioning booster until the lap and shoulder belts fit properly and the child's legs are long enough to bend at the edge of the seat.

Child Safety Seat Tips

Safety requirements change as children grow. Learn the basic facts for proper use of child safety seats.

• Infants — From birth to 1 year and less than 20 pounds, infants should be placed in rear-facing child safety seats in the back seat of the car. The harness straps should be at or below shoulder level.
• Toddlers — From 1 year and at least 20 to 40 pounds, toddlers should be placed in forward-facing child safety seats in the back seat of the car. The harness straps should be at or above the shoulders. Children who are less than 1 year but weigh more than 20 pounds should ride in restraint seats approved for higher rear-facing weights.
• Young children — Children more than 40 pounds but less than 4 feet 9 inches tall should be placed in forward-facing booster seats in the back seat of the car. Lap belts should fit low and tight across the thighs, and shoulder belts should fit snugly across the chest and shoulder to prevent abdominal injuries.

It is important to know that your child passenger safety devices are working properly at all times. For up-to-date notifications of the latest recalls on child safety devices, you can subscribe to RSS feeds and email notifications offered by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Child Passenger Safety Facts

• Motor vehicle crashes cause about one of every three injury deaths among children, according to a 2002 report from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
  (Source: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety , 2003)
• According to a 2003 report, 59 percent of children ages 0 to 4 were unrestrained when the driver of a passenger vehicle was unrestrained. When a driver was restrained, 80 percent of children ages 0 to 4 also were restrained.
  (Source: National Center for Statistics and Analysis , 2003)
• Car accident fatalities for children under 5 dropped from 706 in 2000 to 668 in 2001. The number of fatalities for children ages 5 to 15 dropped from 2,105 to 1,990 in 2001.
  (Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration , 2003)