Child safety in a car is important
Child safety is a major factor to be considered when going on a long journey in a car.
Senior superintendent Wilfred Kgasago, spokesman for the EMPD says children should be restrained in a car seat and not stand and play around in a vehicle.
Seatbelts and car seats are secondary safety devices and are designed to prevent or minimise injuries when a crash has occurred.
They reduce the risk of contact with the inside of the vehicle or reduce the severity of injuries if this occurs.
The seatbelt and car seat distribute the forces of a crash over the strongest parts of the human body and prevent the child from being thrown from the vehicle on impact.
It also prevents injury to other passengers.
When the car is bumped from the front, a child not wearing a seatbelt or sitting in a car seat, can be thrown forward and hits the passengers in the front.
Kgasago says if a child is not seated in the rear seat of a vehicle, they pose a serious threat to any restrained person seated directly ahead of them.
When a child is restrained in a car seat or wearing a seatbelt, they will be kept in their seat and thus will reduce speed at the same rate as the car.
“The use of seatbelts by passengers will not only reduce the likelihood and severity of injury to themselves, but also to drivers and front seat passengers,” he says.
Parents need to know how seatbelts, car seats and airbags work.
Airbags should also be seen as a supplemental restraint system which is designed to add additional protection to seatbelts.
While airbags have saved many lives, there have also been deaths attributed to airbags deploying in crashes that would not have been life-threatening. Analysis of deaths involving airbags in the United States showed that nearly all of the people who have died from airbag-related injuries were either unrestrained or improperly restrained.
Most of the deaths have been to children and adults of small stature.
Phillip de Villiers, service manager of a local car dealer, says airbags are a passive restraint system, deploying automatically in some types of crashes.
Parents should make sure that their children wear seatbelts or are restrained in a car seat regardless of whether the vehicle has an airbag installed or not.
It is best for small children to be sitting in a car seat on the back seat away from airbags.
