Child Passenger Safety

The American Academy of Pediatrics published a policy statement on child restraint selection in the online edition of the Journal [1] with a supporting technical paper [2]. The National Highway and Traffic Administration (NHTSA) also released revised recommendations on child restraint selection on the same day.

A substantial problem with complex guidelines for child restraint selection is that the moment at which transition should take place becomes ill-defined. Good guidance should be memorable and should only use information about children that parents readily know. Getting the majority of families to use the most appropriate restraint most of the time is a significant part of the problem, and it is possible that overly complex algorithms will not assist in overcoming this.

We have previously shown that concrete age-based guidelines to restraint transitions are suitable, even when the design criteria are based on child anthropometry, and that age-based guidelines might lead to higher levels of appropriate restraint selection [3,4]. Indeed, we consider that technical aspects of restraint fit are the responsibility of those involved in specifying the design of automobile seats and child restraints. Further, it should be unnecessary for parents (or pediatricians for that matter) to become experts in the finer points of child restraint selection and fit, and that good design criteria should allow a simple rule for restraint transition based on a child’s age to be sufficient.

AAP’s policy concerns itself with technical correctness, and is an important achievement in that respect, whereas there is a great need to simplify the message for parents. To this end, belt and seat geometry could be designed to better coordinate with simple guidelines based on age [3]. As it is, age-based transitions can be used to lift levels of appropriate restraint selection.

References

1. Committee On Injury, Violence, And Poison Prevention. Policy Statement— Child Passenger Safety. Pediatrics 2011; 0: peds.2011-0213v1-20110213

2. Durbin DR and Committee On Injury, Violence, And Poison Prevention. Technical Report Child Passenger Safety. Pediatrics 2011; 0: peds.2011-0215v1- 20110215

3. Anderson RWG, Hutchinson TP. The feasibility of age-based criteria for child restraint selection. 20th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles, Lyon, France, 18-21 June 2007.

4. Anderson RWG, Hutchinson TP, Edwards SA. Using child age or weight in selecting type of in-vehicle restraint: implications for promotion and design. Proceedings of 51st Annual Scientific Conference of the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine, pp 181-195. 2007.

Conflict of Interest:

None declared