Better Education for the Child Safety Seat
Toyota and the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, longtime partners in “Buckle Up For Life”, a local initiative to prevent automotive injuries, take an important message about child safety seats nationwide on September 17 in Washington D.C.
By Tara Weingarten
Car Crashes Are The Number One Killer Of Kids Under Age 12
Shocking but true. And many of those fatalities are easily prevented by buckling your kid in a properly secured child safety seat. Indeed, only one in four child car seats is correctly installed. What’s more, many kids are placed in seats that are simply wrong for their size, age or height. Learn what’s right for your child here and here.
National Child Passenger Safety Week
Stop guessing about whether you’ve chosen the correct seat for your child, and whether or not it’s latched properly. During National Child Passenger Safety Week Toyota is sponsoring the first national Buckle Up For Life Day in Washington D.C. on Tuesday, September 17. Here, you’ll meet with child safety experts and get hands-on instruction on how to buy the right car seat, along with easy tips for installation. If you’re in the Washington D.C. area, bring family and friends to Union Station, beginning at 10 am EDT. For more information, check out the BuckleUpForLife Facebook page and BuckleUpForLife.org
Those outside the Washington D.C. area can tune in for a live Twitter Chat on September 17 at 2 PM EDT @buckleupforlife and #BuckleUpForLIfe to hear experts answer your child car seat safety-related questions.
Buckle Up For Life
The program initially was launched in 2004 at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital to educate local Hispanic and African American parents about how to correctly choose and use child safety seats. Statistics had shown that certain minority groups were not receiving adequate information about how to keep their kids safe inside a car. With sponsorship from Toyota, the program was able to reach these communities and reduce the number of child fatalities caused by car crashes.
Buckle Up For Life was developed by trauma specialists at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and vehicle safety experts at Toyota. Seeing the program’s success over these past nine years, the team is introducing the program to a national audience on September 17, again with sponsorship by Toyota and with input from its vehicle safety experts.
One Response to “Better Education for the Child Safety Seat”
I would HIGHLY recommend putting that child seat in the middle of the vehicle. The more metal and compartment space that you have around your little fella/gal, the better. I am a firefighter and paramedic and have seen some absolutely destroyed vehicles in which the baby was nearly untouched because of well installed child seats. I am not saying that the outboard position would not protect your baby also, just keep in mind the maximum metal and space around your child.
As for the middle seat and LATCH. I want to be careful so as to not recommend or encourage anything here.
Just throwing out facts and you can make your own decisions. The recommendation is that LATCH be used on the outboard positions because that is where it is crash tested. It is not crash tested in the middle (using the inner latch from both outboard seats) for some reason that I am not sure of. Seats are tested and found to be secure on the outboard positions. Proceed as you please.