Child restraints safer in a crash than seat belts

In a car crash, toddlers and other young children are less likely to be killed if they ride in a booster seat or use some other type of child restraint system rather than just a seat belt, new study findings show.

"Parents should feel confident that using an age-appropriate restraint for their young child is the best thing they could do to minimize their child's risk of death," study co-author Dr. Dennis R. Durbin, of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, told Reuters Health.

Previous studies have found that child restraint systems are associated with a lower risk of non-fatal injury as well.

In their investigation, Durbin and his colleagues looked at national data representing nearly 965,000 children, aged 2 through 6 years, involved in two-way crashes from 1998 to 2003, in which the vehicle was afterwards non-drivable. About 1 of every 1000 children died.

Fewer than half (45 percent) of all children were in rear- or forward-facing child car seats, booster seats or other child restraint systems, the investigators report in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

After taking the children's seating position into consideration as well as other factors, Durbin and his team found that kids in child restraint systems had a 21 percent lower risk of dying than those who only used seat belts.

Further, when cases in which the child restraint system or seat belts were seriously misused were excluded from the analysis, there was an even greater benefit of child restraints: a 28 percent reduction in the risk of death in comparison to seat belts alone, the report indicates.

Seat belts are designed with "average-sized adults in mind" for optimal performance, Durbin explained, likening a child's use of adult seat belts to the idea of getting a 5-year-old child to wear adult-sized clothing. "It's obvious that there's a problem," he said.

Further, in light of "conventional wisdom" among parents that car seats are difficult to use properly, Durbin emphasized that the current study included "real families, real crashes, real kids." Even accounting for any improperly installed car seats, he said, the findings show that the child restraints offer "better protection from death than seat belts alone."

"It's worth the extra time and effort to put your child in a right restraint," Durbin concluded.

For those who need help in addition to the information provided in their car and car seat manuals, Durbin suggested a visit to www.chop.edu\carseat for information on car seat installation and for links to other related sites.

SOURCE: Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, June 2006.