A sad but true fact: Car crashes are the number one cause of death and serious injury for children. To keep our kids as safe as possible in cars, have them ride in the backseat of the car for as long as possible. Why you ask? Riding in the front simply isn’t as safe as riding in the back.
According to http://www.car-safety.org/, children 12 and under should ride in the backseat of a car, but many passenger safety organizations recommend going even further by keeping your child in the backseat until your child is ready to get their drivers license.
Check out these statistics from BabyCenter about car safety:
- Buckling a child into the backseat instead of the front reduces by a third his risk of death in a collision.
- In a head-on crash (the most common and deadly type of collision), a child in the front seat is more likely to be thrown into your car's dashboard or through the windshield.
- Even if your child is properly buckled in, he's at much greater risk for being harmed by objects intruding into the car in the front than in the back.
- In cars with passenger air bags (which includes most newer models), the air bags deploy with such force that they can cause severe head and neck injuries to a child. Nationwide, more than a hundred children have been killed by air bags in recent years, and many of these deaths were in slow-speed collisions that should have been minor.
Not convinced yet? Read this editorial on MSN. I don’t know about you, but my kids will stay in the back for years and years to come.
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