Child-seat warning to parents

Research published in the British Medical Journal has suggested that seats which face away from oncoming traffic could be up to 75 per cent safer for children carried in cars. The report suggests that too many parents in the UK are too quick to move children into front-facing seats and that ideally children should remain facing away from the traffic until they are at least 4 years old. The research, undertaken by Surrey GP Dr Elizabeth Watson and Dr Michael Monteiro, a specialist registrar at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford, looked at existing data on car seats in reaching their conclusions.

Whilst this advice is borne out by statistics, the problem in the UK is that many of the rear facing seats cease to be usable by children over 9Kg (20lbs). Thus children over about 8 months are forced to be carried in normal front facing child seats.

A study undertaken in Sweden, suggested that, over a seven year period, half of the children who died in accidents where front facing “booster” seats were used could have been saved had they been using rear-facing seats. This is backed up by a study in the US which looked at information on 870 car crashes involving children between 1998 and 2003 and which found that rear facing seats were 75 per cent more effective.

Rear-facing seats tend to be more effective because they protect children from lower neck and chest injuries, which can prove fatal and keep the head, neck and spine fully aligned so that any force, such as from a crash, are distributed across the body.

Dr Watson has called upon healthcare professionals to advise parents that rear-facing seats are safer than forward-facing seats for children under four years and has asked manufacturers and retailers to make rear-facing seats for older children more available.

For more information on the use of child seats visit www.childcarseats.org.uk/