Texas drivers: Study gives us more good reasons to buckle up our kids

A recent study at the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) analyzed the types of injuries and the incident rates in kids under the age of 8 involved in motor vehicle wrecks.  One of the top questions is always: do child safety seats make a difference?  On this point the answer is clearly YES.

It is very important for parents and caregivers in Texas to understand the Texas child safety restraint laws and follow them, no matter their personal feelings (or their kid’s feelings) about car or booster seats. 

Learn more in these informative articles:

• Five tips for keeping your kids safe in their car or booster seat
• What you need to know about the new Texas child safety seat laws
• Is your child really ready for an adult seat belt?

Let’s look at what the NHTSA study found:

• The use of age-appropriate child safety seats cuts down on the injury rate in all age groups (under 8) for all types of accidents.
• Rollover crashes resulted in the most incapacitating injuries of any crash type.  Restraints were especially effective in cutting down on injuries in rollover wrecks: without a restraint a child is three times as likely to be hurt as a child who is in a restraint.
• When it comes to near-side impact collisions, children who are not restrained in a child safety seat were eight times as likely to be injured as those who were properly restrained.
• The most common type of injury suffered by children in a car wreck is a head injury.  Children under the age of 1 are the most likely of all children under the age of 8 to sustain a head injury in a crash.
• Contusions or lacerations of the cerebrum (largest part of the brain) were the most common type of head injury for all children.
• Children under the age of 1 are also more likely to suffer from thoracic (chest) injuries and rib fractures than other children.  They are also more likely to suffer from concussions and unconsciousness after an accident.
• Children ages 1 to 3 and 4 to 7 were more likely than those under the age of 1 to suffer skull base fractures or lung injuries like contusions or lacerations.

As you can see from the study results, children can really suffer if they are not properly restrained in a moving vehicle.  Don’t mess around when traveling with children – make sure they are safely restrained.