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Home › Articles › Safe Family › Booster Seats:

Booster Seats:

An Urgent Need for Preschoolers

Part One

By Brenda Ruggiero

Pages:  1  2  3  

Many parents who diligently buckle their babies and toddlers into child safety seats are inadvertently putting them at risk when they get older. In many states, children are required by law to be restrained in seats only until the age of 3. This often attributes to the incorrect assumption that older children are properly protected by regular seat belts. The fact is that older children need to use a booster seat to be safe.

Seat Use Chart

"Booster seats are the most under used seat out there," says Bob Wall, Traffic Safety Officer for Fairfax County, Va. "Parents think it's a rite of passage -- they're growing up now, so they're ready for a seat belt. They think that if the law says it's OK, then it's OK. But the truth is that the laws are passed by people who don't really understand the issues."

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), "Children who cannot sit with their backs straight against the vehicle seat back cushion, with knees bent over a vehicle's seat edge without slouching, are not big enough for adult seat belts. On a small child, the adult lap belt rides up over the stomach and the shoulder belt cuts across the neck. In a crash, this could cause serious or even fatal injuries."

"Cars are designed for an adult world, and a booster seat makes a child fit into an adult world correctly," says Wall. Using a booster seat positions the seat belt properly across a child's body so it can work safely and effectively. In addition, a booster allows the child's legs to bend normally. This is more comfortable for the child, lessening the chance of slouching, which can cause a belt to fit poorly.

One Mom Learns Importance of Child Restraints
A close call in 1999 convinced Christine Guarino of the importance of using proper safety restraints for her children. When the Germantown, Md. mom visited a car seat check, officials made a recommendation concerning her 5-year-old son Stephen's seat. " We had a booster seat with the 5-point harness, but one mistake that most parents make is that once the child reaches 40 pounds, that 5-point strap needs to be taken off and they need to use the seat belt with the booster seat instead," says Guarino. "Stephen was around 44 pounds, and they felt that according to the manufacturer's advice the straps wouldn't hold him properly. So we took the straps off and used the seat as a belt-positioning booster seat."

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