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Children Not Using Safety Seats, NHTSA Study Finds

January 27, 2005

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A government study finds that most children aged 4 to 8 aren't using booster seats, meaning that they could be thrown from their car in an accident.

A study published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine found that only 40 percent of children used safety seats or boosters at least some of the time. Reason? Parents don't know about the seats or think that because they're only traveling a short distance, the risk is acceptable.

"Emergency physicians cringe when we see a child riding unrestrained in a vehicle because we know if it crashes, the child will be hurled like a missile," Dr. Herbert Garrison of East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., wrote in a commentary on the survey. "The result for the child may be severe injury or death."

For the survey, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration interviewed 6,000 randomly chosen Americans over the age of 16 in 2003, asking questions about safety belts, child safety seats, airbag crash injuries and other issues.

The survey found that 21 percent of children aged 4 to 8 rode in a booster seat even occasionally, while another 19 percent rode in a front-facing child safety seat at least on occasion.

While laws vary from one state to another, experts recommend that children up to 40 pounds should ride in child safety seats. After that, booster seats should be used to ensure that smaller children fit properly into safety belts.

Half the parents and care givers who put the child into a booster seat only occasionally said the child was only in the vehicle a very short time. Another 41 percent said no seat was available and 34 percent said the child did not like the seat, the NHTSA survey found.

Motor vehicle crashes are the most common cause of childhood death in the United States.

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