Educational Materials for the Child Passenger Safety Field
News
NHTSA and the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) community have taken a step forward by completing a long-awaited set of EMS best practices for transporting children in ground ambulances. A draft was issued in mid-2010, as reported in July/August 2010 issue of SRN, and was followed by a public meeting later that year. The final report varies little from the draft.
Read More from “EMS Child Transport Recommendations Published”
A powerful book about injury prevention, a topic very near to my heart, has inspired me to speak out during this political season when we are hearing a lot of rhetoric about too much regulation, the “nanny state,” individual rights to not buckle up or wear a motorcycle helmet, or even not supporting public funding of essential things such as repair of highway bridges.
While We Were Sleeping: Success Stories in Injury and Violence Prevention, by David Hemenway of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, presents a highly readable account of many successful efforts to protect people by preventing unintentional injuries and violence. It is his “personal ode to public health,” particularly injury prevention, which has fascinated him since the 1960s, when he worked for Ralph Nader and Consumers Union. He wants to explain the importance of public health because “most people do not recognize, or do not readily recall, when they personally have benefitted from a public health intervention.”
Read More from “New Book a Timely Ode to the Value of Injury Prevention”
When considering how long a CR can be used, the tendency is to focus primarily on weight limits. But given the quantity of high-weight-harness (HWH) models on today’s market, most children will outgrow a CR by height before reaching the weight limit—sometimes long before.
It wasn’t always this way. Within recent memory, weight was nearly always the limiting factor, since infant CRs had 22-pound rear-facing limits, and forward-facing harnesses uniformly could be used to 40 pounds. But CRs today have been strengthened and are rated to be used at much higher weights for either mode, so the mind-set must shift to expecting most CRs to be outgrown by height.
Read More from “Today’s CRs More Often Outgrown by Height Than Weight”
A study by The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and State Farm insurance shows that teens who drive in states with primary seat belt law enforcement are more likely to buckle up than those in states with secondary enforcement.* ((Drivers violating primary laws can be pulled over and cited, whereas drivers violating secondary laws can be cited for the infraction only if first pulled over for violating a primary law.)) It also found that teens buckle up more often while driving (82 percent) than as passengers (69 percent).
In April, Transport Canada (TC) and Health Canada jointly issued a Consumer Information Notice to warn Canadian citizens that it is illegal to import and use a CR in Canada that does not comply with Canadian standards (as verified by the national service mark, shown here). This applies to all CRs, whether purchased by consumers while abroad or shipped to their address by a non-Canadian catalog or online retailer. The reminder was prompted by reports by border officers and CPSTs indicating an influx of CRs being privately imported into Canada.
Read More from “Canadians Warned: Use Only CRs That Meet CMVSSs”
The tragic death last September of a Macon, Georgia, infant in a grocery store parking lot reminds us of the very real danger to children when riding in a common form of “transportation”—the shopping cart. The 3-month-old was secured in his infant seat perched on the child seating area of the shopping cart when he and the CR toppled from the cart as it went over a parking lot speed bump.
Read More from “Grocery Carts Pose Hidden Risks to Children”
Excerpt from Safe Ride News, Nov/Dec 2011.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has been successful in its effort to get CPT (Current Procedural Terminology) codes assigned to car seat/car bed challenge procedures (also known as angle tolerance tests). This is an important accomplishment because medical services with an assigned CPT code can be submitted by the practitioner for insurance reimbursement. This means that these procedures are likely to become more routine and widespread for at-risk infants.
Read More from “Car Seat/Car Bed Challenges Get Billing Codes”
In the last two issues, SRN ran articles exploring CR angle situations of following the “level-to-ground” line and considering issues related to touching the back of the front vehicle seat. During our research, we noted a handful of other interesting angle-related issues worth mentioning.
Safe Ride News asked the Global Automakers and the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers (auto industry groups that, between the two, represent the U.S. divisions of every major vehicle brand) about the safety of children seated near side air bags in the rear seating area, including torso air bags. The following is a joint statement from these organizations:
Read More from “Auto Industry Statement on Air Bags in Rear Seating Positions”
Once again, in the heat of August, NHTSA aimed an icy blast at efforts to require lap-shoulder belts on all school buses. A petition submitted by Safe Ride News Publications and others in January, 2010 (SRN January/February 2010), after a fatal school bus crash in Connecticut, was denied by NHTSA on August 25, 2011. The agency said, “We have not found a safety problem supporting a federal requirement for lap-shoulder belts on large school buses, which are already safe.”
Read More from “Winds Blowing Warm and Cold for Seat Belts on School Buses”
