Are you properly putting your child in the car seat? Many Coloradans are not.
According to Colorado data from 2022, 66% of caregivers are improperly restraining children in their seats.
Between 2018 and 2022, 36 children younger than eight died in car crashes. Car Seats Colorado, in collaboration with CDOT and Colorado State Patrol is on a mission to change that. They host several events where parents and caregivers are educated and shown the proper way to install and use a car seat.
At Children's Hospital Colorado in Aurora, they have a safety store where you can buy and have car seats installed.
"We don't know what we don't know," said Britney Lombard, Injury Prevention Manager at Children's Hospital. "So, when you aren't able to read the manual or understand the manual, it's great to ask for additional resources. That could be the car seat manufacturer or a child passenger safety technician, just to make sure that you are doing it correctly."
Some of the most common ways car seats and booster seats are misused, includes the car seat not correctly fitting the child's height, weight, and physical development. Also, the harness is not tight enough, the chest clip is not in the correct location, the seatbelt is too loose, and the child is out of the booster seat too soon.
"I think there's a lot of reasons that kids are getting injured in car crashes when it is a preventable injury most of the time. A lot of the time it is improper restraints or no restraint at all. And the way that crashes work is that there is a lot of energy transferred in a very short amount of time and car seats are designed to help slow down the crash forces over time which reduces injury," Lombard said.
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