In India we don’t use child seats; Here’s why we should

Many budget cars in India have started offering the ISOFIX hooks as standard. Even the standard hooks cannot get many to buy the child seats, which are of utter importance to the safety of children. An incident from the U.S. shows us why the child seats are so important, and how they can save lives.

What exactly happened?

Jenna Casado Rabberman shared the experience through a Facebook post implying the importance of child seat in vehicles. The mother and her two children, one aged two years and one 6-weeks were involved in a massive accident.

The mother had stopped the car to get milk when a vehicle came and slammed into the parked Honda CR-V. The children who were strapped securely escaped without a single scratch. From the pictures of the vehicle, the crash seemed to happen at a very high speed.

The mother wrote in her post

I’m not one to post anything too heavy or personal on Facebook but guys… THIS is why you buckle your kids into their car seats correctly every SINGLE time. Even when they scream because the straps are tight. Even when they complain about the chest clip or being rear facing. We stopped for milk on the way home from preschool yesterday. We were minutes from home. Another car slammed into us. You never think it will happen to you. My boys escaped without a scratch but the paramedics told me it could have been very different had I not taken the extra 2 minutes to be sure they were buckled correctly. I will be fine, my kids are fine, everything else can be replaced. Sending thanks to God for keeping us safe (along with Honda, Graco & Chicco).

Child seats in India

There are a very few people who bother to get child seat installed in their vehicles. Often, the children are not even strapped to the regular seatbelt, and they move around the vehicle freely. The regular seat belts are not designed to protect the children.

As the height of children is much shorter than the seatbelt design, it is important to strap the children securely to the special child seats. It is not a law in India to secure the children to child seats, but with manufacturers taking initiative to put the child seat in the vehicles, the customers should take advantage of the same and use it wisely.

What happens to the unrestrained children?

Children who are unrestrained in an accident can go through severe injuries. Here is an example of two dummy children who are unrestrained and one of them is looking back kneeling on his knees involved in an accident. The crash test takes place at 48 km/h, and the children at the rear get tossed around the vehicle and suffer from severe, life-threatening injuries.

There is also an infant in the front passenger seat who gets crushed due to the opening of the airbag. The video shows the importance of child seat in a vehicle and why they are so important. The Indian roads are deemed as one of the most dangerous in the world with the most number of fatalities every year. The use of child seat will bring down the numbers and will also save the children from harrowing experiences.