Every week across America, parents drive young children to and from school, daycare, the store, and around the city in car seats and boosters. Yet nearly half of all car seats are installed wrong, which means your child may not be traveling as safely as possible.
Car seats and boosters are one of the easiest ways to keep your child safe and, when installed correctly, car seats can reduce the risk of fatal injury in a crash by 71 percent for infants and by 54 percent for toddlers. Unfortunately, many parents install their child seats incorrectly. Among children under 5, car seats saved an estimated 328 lives in 2016 alone. An additional 370 more children could have survived if they had been properly restrained in a car seat or booster seat.
Vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death for children. From 2012 to 2016, there were 3,268 children under 13 killed while riding in passenger vehicles, and these tragic figures have been increasing steadily since 2014. More than one-third of those children were not buckled at all. These deaths are 100-percent preventable. If you have a car seat in your vehicle, visit a Certified Child Passenger Safety Technician in your community to double-check that it’s properly installed. You can use this simple search tool to find a car seat inspection station near you right now or visit a car seat check in your community on National Seat Check Saturday on September 29