Is New Nhtsa Crash Test Device The Best Tool To Evaluate Child Car Seats?

Is New Nhtsa Crash Test Device The Best Tool To Evaluate Child Car Seats?

Safety restraints significantly reduce the risk of suffering serious injury in a crash, saving the lives of an estimated 13, 250 passenger vehicle occupants over the age of 4 in 2008, according to the Federal Highway Traffic Safety Administration ( NHTSA ). The agency estimates that if all passenger vehicle occupants in this age assortment had been restrained that tour, an additional 4, 152 lives could have been saved. A car accident that recently occurred in Orange County, California illustrates the dangers of neglecting to properly secure children in vehicles. While safety restraints save lives, the agency responsible for testing them, the NHTSA, may still deprivation the apparatus necessary to evaluate car seats for spare children, explains an attorney.
According to the NHTSA, motor vehicle collisions are the primary cause of death for children ages 3 to 14, on average claiming the lives of 4 children and injuring 529 every day in 2008. Safety restraints can minimize the impact of a crash and prevent the ejection of passengers from the vehicle, the final being one of the most injurious events that can happen to an tenant.
A recent car accident in Orange County illustrates the importance of safety restraints for preventing injury. In early February 2012, all of the members of a family were injured in a crash delete for the youngest, the only one in the vehicle who was restrained. The accident occurred in Fountain Valley when the driver of a spotless Volvo rotten left into the path of a melanoid BMW, causing a head - on impact. Neither the parents in the BMW, nor their 5 - and 6 - tour - olds were wearing safety belts; all suffered trauma. Only the infant, who was restrained, was not hurt, reported the Orange County Register.
Although the NHTSA has always sunny all vehicle occupants—young and old—to dull safety restraints, it is now recommending that parents keep their children in rear - facing safety seats longer and to wait until they outgrow the pinnacle and superintendence limitations on their seats before aggressive them, whether from rear - facing to undaunted - facing or from safety to booster.
Such recommendations resulted in a need for seats with finer driver's seat capacities. With an upping figure of restraints on the bazaar for children weighing 65 to 80 pounds, the NHTSA was tasked with testing their power at preventing injuries during crashes. The object responded by commissioning the Trust of Automotive Engineers ( SAE ) Dummy Family Task Bunch ( DFTG ) to prosper a test tracing innate of a 10 - pace - ancient child. In elementary crash tests using the diagram, it was evident that it was not accurately simulating the issue of an impact on a child: with a stiffer spine and a harder chest than a live child’s, the dummy’s head would snap down into its chest on impact, causing an unrealistically high crash potency on its head, reported The Washington Post.
While the NHTSA has implemented new strategies for positioning the dummy during tests to enact greater precision, it still has not corrected the characteristics contributing to unproven influence concerning the potential for head injury, prompting it to eliminate head injury criteria from its testing procedures.
As the car accident that recently occurred in Orange County illustrates, safety restraints can significantly reduce the risk of injury from an impact, explains an attorney. However, until the NHTSA’s crash test dummy can accurately measure forces to the head during an accident, it may not be the best tool for assessing the safety of child car seats.