Children riding more safely in vehicles

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By Cheryl Jensen MOTOR MATTERS

The largest study ever -- conducted over an eight-year period -- of what happens to children in car crashes offers some optimistic and dismaying insights.

The study, which began in 1997, was done by the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia as part of its Partners for Child Passenger Safety program.

Safety researchers say the goal of the study was to see how well children were protected in real-world crashes, instead of relying on the classic method, which involves the use of test dummies in staged crash tests.

The results of the study, the "2008 Facts and Trend Report," were recently published and the full version is available at www.chop.edu/injury.

It finds that parents are doing a far better job of protecting children by making sure they are properly restrained. It also finds there is room for improvement. These are some of the findings:

• As children get older they are more likely to be injured in a crash. Researchers said this "is due in part to the different ways in which they are restrained at each age, where they sit and other crash characteristics." The chances of being injured are highest for children 13-to-15 years of age.

• Children are four times more likely to be injured in a crash when the driver is 16-to-19-years old, compared to when the driver is 20-years-old or older.

• Head injuries are the most common injury for both children and drivers in a crash.

• Parents need to do a better job of keeping children out of the front seat. The American Academy of Pediatrics says children under the age of 13 should ride in the back seat. But the study found that about a third of 8-to-12-year-olds are still allowed to sit in the front.

• Rollover crashes pose the highest risk of injury to children. - About 48 percent of the crashes involving children happened on roads with speed limits of between 25 and 44 mph.

• Most crashes (60 percent) in which children are injured occur no more than 10 minutes from home.

• Children are most likely to be injured on "local roads" or those that are not divided. About 75 percent of injury-producing crashes occur on such roads.

• Parents are doing a much better job in making sure their children are properly restrained. In 1999 only 51 percent of the children under nine were in a child restraint. By the end of last year that had increased to 80 percent.

• Parents are doing a better job of making sure their child is in the right type of restraint, which varies according to the child's size and age. That alone is incredibly important in protecting a child. In 1999 only 15 percent of the children from four to eight were in the proper type of child restraint. By 2007 it was up to 63 percent.

Having a child who is too big for a car seat restrained by the vehicle's seat belt is better than nothing, safety researchers say. But it is not nearly as good as having that child use a booster seat, which elevates the child's body so that the adult belt fits properly. Booster seats make a huge difference. The chance of a 4-to-8-year-old being seriously injured in a crash dropped by 59 percent when the child was using a booster seat, an earlier study found.

In the last decade, booster seat use among 4- and 5-year-olds has increased from 30 percent to 88 percent, the study found. Among children 6-, 7- and 8-year-olds, booster seat use was used about 43 percent, compared to just two percent in 1999.

More parents now realize that a child needs the help of a booster seat to make sure the belt fits properly across the bony part of the lap and shoulder rather than across the soft belly or the neck, which are more prone to injury, according to Kristy Arbogast, Ph.D., director of engineering at the Children's Hospital Center for Injury Research and Prevention.

She said adult seat belts are likely to properly fit children once they are 49 inches tall, which is often when they are about 8 years-old. Additional information on booster seats including a video on how they should be used is available at www.chop.edu/carseat.