Parents are often faced with all kinds of dilemmas when it comes to using car seats for their children. Many parents accidentally make various car seat mistakes, with incorrect installation and switching to the forward-facing position too early as some of the most common ones.
A new study that was recently published might confuse parents further and cause them to repeat the same mistakes when putting their children in car seats, potentially increasing their risk of getting seriously injured in the event of a collision. In the latest edition of the Journal of Traffic Injury Prevention, a new study examining the potential safety risks of rear-facing car seats was published, claiming that children can sustain severe injuries in rear-end collisions when riding in a car seat facing the back of an automobile.
Consumer Reports and many safety experts quickly reacted to this study by stating that it could send the wrong message to parents and lead them to move their children to a forward-facing position too early.
The study compares the effects of LATCH (Lower Anchors and Tether for Children) systems against the seat belts installed in a vehicle’s backseat in rear-end collisions. It was conducted by researchers Jamie R. Williams, Carrie A. O’Donel and Peter J. Leiss, who work at Robson Forensic, Inc., a forensic engineering company.
Using child-sized dummies, researchers ran simulated crash tests to measure the effect of a rear impact on a child in a car seat faced backwards. They found that this orientation increases the risk for children to sustain serious injuries to their heads, compared to the forward-facing position.
The authors of the study say that in the rear-end crash tests, the dummies sitting in a rear-facing car seat were thrown against the car’s backseat and got severe injuries to their heads. What’s more, they found that the injuries were more severe when the car seat was secured through the LATCH system compared with the car’s seat belts.
The finding that children are exposed to substantial dangers when fastened in a rear-facing car seat during rear-end collisions does sound alarming, and it might well make parents move their children to a forward-facing position sooner than recommended by safety experts. But, this is exactly what Consumer Reports warns of in a recent statement. Consumer Reports says that children should not be moved to forward-facing position too soon, citing recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics that advise parents to keep children in a rear-facing position at least until the age of two, since it has proven to be a much safer position.