As a Seattle personal injury lawyer and even more so as a parent I worry about the safety of children while riding along in the car. One of the most important responsibilities for any parent is making sure their kids are safe as passengers in a car. A child’s body is simply too frail to not take extra precautions in a car. Over 1,000 kids under the age of 10 die every year from car accidents, but this number could be drastically reduced if more parents knew proper car safety techniques for their children. This article will mostly focus on how to protect your young children, but my first piece of advice is universal for people of all ages.
Wear a seatbelt! The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found in a recent report that seatbelts saved over 13,000 lives in 2008 alone. Between 2004 and 2008, the NHTSA has concluded that seatbelts saved over 75,000 lives. The fact of the matter is that police don’t give people tickets for not wearing their seatbelts because they are on a power trip; they do it to save lives. Seatbelts are especially important for young children, who have much less of a chance to survive an impact without one on. So at the very least, set a good example for your kids and buckle up yourself.
For kids under the age of 10 there is a lot more they need to do to properly protect themselves in a car. As a parent, I know that the correct measures to take can be very confusing – and debatable – but the NHTSA has laid out a description of three steps that parents should absolutely take with their children to ensure the highest level of safety.
Babies younger than 1-year-old or under 20 lbs. should sit in rear-facing child safety seats. Each rear facing child seat is different, so make sure to read the manual before you use it, but in general, they all serve the same purpose. Placed in the backseat of the car, the baby would be safe from an airbag and dangerous head-on collision. The seat itself drastically reduces any chance for spinal cord injury and spreads out the impact of a crash throughout the whole body, rather than in just one spot.
Toddlers between 1 and 4-years-old, or 20 and 40 lbs. should sit in forward-facing child safety seats. At a certain point, a child will outgrow the rear-facing child safety seat and have to move to a forward facing one. The major reason why this seat is important, is that the seatbelt of a normal seat is far too big for a child of this size. The safety seat buckles in your kid so they won’t go flying through the car in case of an accident. Of course, this seat should always be in the back of the car to avoid the airbag.
Children between the ages of 4 and 8 should sit in a booster seat. The seat belt will not fit kids until they reach a height of around 4’9” or weigh 80lbs but that isn’t until at least age 8 for most children. The booster seat is the in between step when they outgrow a safety seat, but aren’t yet tall enough for the normal car seatbelt. The booster seat should be placed in the backseat of a car, because children between these ages still aren’t fit to take the impact of an airbag.
As parents, if you take these precautions, you are making a significant difference in your child’s chance of survival in case you get into a car accident. The road out there is full of distracted and dangerous drivers, so buckle up, and make sure your kids are properly protected as well.

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