Child safety seats (sometimes referred to as an infant safety seat, a child restraint system, a restraint car seat, or ambiguously as car seats) are seats designed specifically to protect children from injury or death during collisions. Automobile manufacturers may integrate child safety seats directly into their vehicle's design. Most commonly, these seats are purchased and installed by consumers. Many regions require children defined by age, weight, and/or height to use a governmentally approved child safety seat when riding in a vehicle. Child safety seats provide passive restraints and must be properly used to be effective.

History

After the first automobile was manufactured and put on the market in the early 1900s, many modifications and adjustments have been implemented to protect those that drive and ride in these vehicles. Most restraints were put into place to protect adults without regard for children, infant through pre-school age. Though child seats were beginning to be manufactured in the early 1930s, their purpose was not the safety of children. The purpose was to act as booster seats to bring the child to a height easier for the driving parent to see them. It wasn’t until 1962 that seats were invented in England by Jeans Ames with the purpose of protecting a child.

Before these seats were invented, rates of death in infants to young children were staggering. Over 2,000 children under the age of fourteen in the United States die every year in automobile accidents.and another 320,000 are injured each year. These injuries and deaths are not just a result of the severity of the accidents themselves. The staggering numbers, in general, can be related to the number of children not being properly restrained within the vehicles. These children are either strapped into adult seat belts or else completely unrestrained.

Law

 United States of America

As a result of these statistics, it is required by law the children under the age of four be secured in safety seats made for children in all of the fifty states. Also, all states require booster seats for children aged four to fourteen depending upon each individual child's age, weight, and height.

Australia

As in the United States road rules are at the command of each separate state or territory, In Victoria a child must be correctly restrained until 7 years of age, using each of the three seats described below. Manufacturing

Though there are hundreds of variations of makes and models in the world of child safety seats, the materials used in the manufacturing process are basically the same across the board. Factories in which the seats are put together receive loads of a tough plastic called polypropylene in the form of tiny pellets.^[4] This tough plastic is very hard to crack, so it only makes sense that it would be used to form the base of all child safety seats. This plastic is universal in the make of all restraints made for children. A company by the name of Indiana Mills is responsible for manufacturing the adjustment mechanisms and buckles for most child safety seats.^[5] Foam makes up the padding of the individual seats, while vinyl and fabrics are used to make up the covers for the seats as well as the harnesses. Among all these products used to make one child safety seat, none are as important as the labels each manufacturer prints according to Federal standards. Printing of these labels is done by subcontracted printers of the manufacturer. These labels must have a permanent place for storage in or on the safety seat and must withstand any tearing so as to make any missing information obvious.

The process of manufacturing the safety seat is what brings all these components together to form a restraint that will increase the safety of a properly restrained child in the case of a motor vehicle accident. In the beginning, the polypropylene is put to use in molding the shells of these seats. Since it arrives in tiny pellet form, these pellets must be melted down and put into a mold of the desired shape of the seat. The seat then moves down an assembly line. On this assembly line, all of the articles from the outside contractors and suppliers are added to the mold. These additions include the foam padding, the fabric covers, the harness, and any buckles or attaching mechanisms. The labels and instructions are also attached at this time. Once it is past the assembly line, the product arrives at the packing department. Here, the seats are wrapped in plastic and packed in cartons which then gets stacked and stored for shipping once ordered.

Types

All child safety seats are made and manufactured using the same process, however there are different types of seats for children of different size and age with specific guidelines as to how they should be used.

• Infant seats - From the time a child is born, they must always ride in an infant seat which is most well known as a rear-facing convertible seat.These seats are designed for a baby that is under twenty pounds and should always remain facing the rear of a vehicle. Seats made specifically for infants are the smallest and have carrying handles for easy carrying and loading. They can be used until the infant is up to 22 through 32 pounds depending on the instructions specified on each individual model.

• Convertible seats - A convertible seat is a child safety restraint that is suggested for the use in the same age and weight range, they are just generally more bulky and can be converted to forward facing child seats as the child grows. Toddlers and pre-school aged children also are to use convertible seats. It is recommended that the child remains facing the rear of the vehicle as long as possible. The American Academy of Pediatrics recently started recommending to begin front-facing at the age of two. Children should ride in a convertible seat with a harness until they outgrow it around the age of four, or weigh at least sixty-five pounds.

• Booster seats - Children over 4 feet in height and between the ages of eight and twelve now upgrade to booster seats. These seats are also front facing and are designed to raise children up so that the belts made for adults fit properly. By this age and size, the child has completely outgrown any rear-facing seat. From the height of 4 feet 9 inches, and the ages of eight to twelve, children may have outgrown their booster seats and can be permitted to use regular adult seat restraints. It is suggested that, until the age of thirteen, the child remains in the back seat.

Hazards

Manufacturers go through every step possible to ensure these seats are properly put together and packaged. However, it is not guaranteed that the included instructions are always adhered to and correctly followed. Up to 95% of the safety seats that are installed may not be the right seat for the child, may be hooked into the vehicle loosely, may be hooked with an incompatible belt in the vehicle, may have harnesses incorrectly fastened in some way, or may be incorrectly placed in front of air bags. In 1997, six out of ten children who were killed in vehicle crashes were not correctly restrained.[9]

Along with the problem of instructions not being followed properly, there are other hazards that can effect children involving these safety seats. A recent study attributed many cases of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) to the prolonged sitting /laying position these infants are in when putting the safety seats to use. When researchers reviewed more than 500 infant deaths, it was found that 17 of these deaths occurred while the infant was in a device such as a child safety seat.[10] The age of the most occurring rates of death by SIDS in a child safety device was found to be under one month, having six of the 17 deaths happen in this age group.[11] Although SIDS has been found to be a high risk regarding child safety seats, a coroner in Quebec also stated that “putting infants in car seats…causes breathing problems and should be discouraged.”[12] His warning same after the death of a two-month-old boy who was left to nap in a child safety seat positioned inside of his crib rather than the crib itself. The death was linked to positional asphyxiation.[13] This means that the child was in a position causing him to slowly lose his supply of oxygen. The coroner said that it is common for a baby’s head to “slump forward while in a car seat and that it diminishes oxygen”.[14] It is recommended for drivers to make frequent stops during trips to prevent an infant sitting in a slumped forward position for any length of time. These are just a small example of the many things that could possibly go wrong with any child safety seat. It is suggestible that every parent look into the product they are buying to gain knowledge of how they work and the ratings they have received. Some resources that can be used for this include The Latch Manual which demonstrates the knowledge of installing different child restraints, Newsletters such as “Safe Riders News”, and fact sheets that can be printed offline as PDF files, etc.