When it comes to car safety and children, most parents are somewhat unaware of what to do to secure their children correctly.
Too often, they forget about the risks associated with installing car safety seats incorrectly. In other instances, parents downplay the risks of using the incorrect models of seats for their children’s height, weight, and age, increasing the injury hazards.
In collisions, car safety seats can protect the child and keep him or her from sustaining serious injuries that could even lead to their death. But the risks are not entirely associated with the restraints, the installation, or even their models.
According to some experts, infants are vulnerable to serious injury risks if they fall asleep in car safety seats while riding along with mom or dad. Sitting devices for babies could increase the risk of certain health problems. During a study that involved 47 cases of children who are younger than 2 experiencing deadly incidents while sitting in car safety seats and other devices they can sit in and be carried.
Out of the 47 cases, two-thirds involved car safety seats while others involved swings, bounces, slings, and strollers. Many parents place them in the devices to get them to fall asleep.
But according to the study author, leaving the baby in a sitting position while you’re focusing on the road is not safe. If you’re looking the other way, the child must be on their backs and in a crib. To experts, sleeping infants and young children should never be left unsupervised in any sitting device, even if they are awake.
In the study, the author detailed one case involved an 11-month-old baby who suffered deadly injuries after being placed in a car safety seat while holding a bottle. The child was left in the seat but not on a moving car, instead, the baby was being watched over in an in-home day care. Since the baby was being secured only with the seat’s chest buckles and the lower buckles were loose, the child ended up slipping down in the car safety seat, causing the baby to become trapped by the neck. Since the strap was pressed against the baby’s neck, the child unfortunately died.
In most cases studied by the group, children who unfortunately died were strangled by a strap or hurt because they were not being able to get enough air simply because the way their bodies were positioned did not give them enough space.
In spite of how much the study shows, it did not focus on how common these incidents are.
For more on this study, follow this link.