Expert statements
Leif Agnar Ellevset
Do you think your child’s safety is worth as much as three or four tankfuls of petrol? Of course you do. Of course you believe that everyone in the car should be securely restrained with approved safety equipment.
Children’s safety in the car costs a little but means a lot. Traffic injuries are often permanent, but many of them can be prevented by using safety equipment. Think about that before you set off in the car – it is your choice and your responsibility!
The cost is no excuse in matters of restraining children safely in the car. There is no shortage of safe children’s seats either. Product information that complies with European requirements and standards will help you make the right choice.
When you buy a child’s car seat marked with a big E surrounded by a circle, you have bought a safe, thoroughly tested seat. The European mark of approval is your guarantee of the quality and safety of the equipment you have chosen. We at Trygg Trafikk (“Safe Traffic”) wish you and your child all the best with your choice and happy trips in the car.
Thomas Turbel
In Sweden the authorities have campaigned for 25 years for children in cars to sit in special rearward-facing seats. The reason is that we want to avoid injuries to the head and neck region. The child’s head is very heavy compared with the rest of the body. A nine-month-old baby’s head comprises 25% of its total body weight, while in an adult the head weighs 6%. In a collision, the child’s neck is subjected to a proportionally higher strain. In a rearward-facing seat, the force of a collision is distributed optimally over the child’s head and back. Over a million rearward-facing seats are in use in Sweden, and we do not know of any cases where a child in a rearward-facing car seat has been seriously injured in a frontal collision. Swedish accident research has shown that rearward facing children’s car seats reduce serious injuries by 92%, while the forward-facing seats only reduce injury by 60%. In the last few years the rest of Europe has also become aware of this. A number of cases are known in which children have been totally paralysed as a result of neck injuries while using forward-facing seats. It is a subject of discussion whether to measure the force exerted on the necks of crash dummies when children’s seats are tested for approval. When this has been done, we can expect that rearward-facing seats will also be approved for children up to the age of three years.
Inggard Lereim
Inggard Lereim, Professor, Doctor of Medicine and Chairman of the Nordic Traffic Medicine Association, passes on some of his experience and research results.
Compared with an adult, a baby’s head is four times as heavy in relation to the rest of the body. A baby’s neck is not sufficiently developed to hold its head up. A baby therefore needs extra support and protection in the head and neck region. In a collision, a safety belt that goes across the stomach can cause injuries to the liver, kidneys and spleen. The belt must be designed to go over the child’s hip region, or as a Y-belt with a strap between the child’s legs.
In side-on collisions the risk of injury is proportionally greater than in collisions from the front or back. Nevertheless, it is only recently that intensive research has been carried out into side-on collisions. Nowadays children’s car seats are available with effective reinforcements in the sides, which have been crash tested over and beyond the requirements for ECE approval. Children’s car seats in advanced designs, which are made to withstand these collisions, are often reinforced with metal.
It can be dangerous to move about in traffic. However, we need to do so for practical reasons. It is necessary to provide our children with the very best protection possible. Up to the age of four years, it should be standard practice that they travel facing rearwards in specially designed children’s seats. The reasons are very simple: A forward-facing seat increases safety by 50%, while in a rearward-facing seat, safety is increased by 90-95%! As parents, we carry the main responsibility for our children’s safety. We must protect them as well as we can, in traffic too, and make sure that everyone in the car is securely and safely restrained.