In the wake of Dorel‘s latest recall of 800,000 child car seats, Thomas Sheridan, a consumer safety advocate and practicing personal injury attorney in Philadelphia has authored this article on children’s car seats

Most parents vividly remember the tremendous responsibility they felt when leaving the hospital with their first born and placing him or her into a child car seat. The ride home from the hospital for the first time with a newborn is, perhaps, the most cautious drive any parent has ever taken.

Most parents make sure that babies and young children are properly restrained in vehicles by placing them in child safety seats or booster seats. Parents believe that these products will protect their precious cargo.

However, thousands of children in the United States are severely injured or killed each year when child car seats and other restraint systems fail.

These protective devices have been the subject of many recalls and these products which parents trust to be safe often are not. Child safety seats are supposed to restrain and protect our children while they are passengers in the car. Design and manufacturing defects frequently cause failures in child car seats resulting in horrific injuries.

Another cause of child injury and death is improper installation of child car and booster seats. Improper installation is usually the result of vague, unclear instructions that are difficult to understand. Typically, the manufacturers of these child safety seats refuse to accept responsibility for the dangers associated with their products.

Crash worthiness is the science of preventing or minimizing serious injury or death from a car accident through the implementation of safety systems. The chief principles of crash worthiness were developed more than 70 years ago in the United States. There are five principles of crash worthiness for any vehicle in a crash:

1. Maintain vehicle survival space
2. Restrain the occupants
3. Prevent ejection
4. Control-crash energy forces
5. Prevent post-crash fires

Once a child safety seat or booster is installed in a vehicle, it becomes an integral part of the vehicle safety system.

In any car accident, there are a series of collisions. The first collision is between the occupied vehicle and another object/vehicle.

This first collision is irrelevant to the crash worthiness of the vehicle. The second collision occurs inside the car when the restrained vehicle occupant collides with either the seat belt, other restraint system or some other part of the vehicle’s interior. The third collision occurs between the body’s internal organs and the bones and structures surrounding them. The principles of crash worthiness focus on these second and third collisions.

Part 2: Is Your Child’s Car Seat Safe?