There were no new big ideas for increasing child safety in a major new study on that topic, but the critical importance of keeping children under 13 in the back seat and buckled up was underscored.It also helps if parents buy the right kind of vehicle, the report notes, and that would be ''minivans and large cars and sport-utility vehicles,'' since ''smaller vehicles had higher injury rates.''''The single most important life-saving decision parents can make for their child is to use the rear seat and age- and size-appropriate restraint on every trip, every time,'' says Flaura K. Winston, M.D.Winston is the scientific director of TraumaLink at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the principal investigator of Partners for Child Passenger Safety (PCPS). Research findings from the PCPS study demonstrate that, for children under age 13, there is a significant reduction in injury risk if they are in the back seat as compared to risk in the front seat, regardless of restraint type. ''Most new parents do understand the dangers of placing a rear-facing infant in front of an airbag,'' says Winston. ''However, as children get older, their likelihood of sitting up front increases.''For children who are the sole passengers at the time of a crash, the PCPS research shows, ''a substantial portion of 4- to 8-year-olds (30 percent) and the majority of 9- to 12-year-olds (73 percent) are riding up front.''While this may be understandable for social reasons, it's a trend that Winston says parents should fight. ''You can negotiate on bedtimes or eating peas for dinner,'' Winston advises, ''but you never negotiate on safety.''Winston says ''Parents appear to be forgetting the importance of rear seating for their children when they grow out of child safety seats.''Age- and size-appropriate restraint and rear seating provide the best protection for all children in motor vehicle crashes, she reiterates. ''While age-appropriate restraint may provide more safety benefits than rear seating, considerable benefits are realized with rear seating for children through age 12.''The PCPS study in the March, 2005, issue of Pediatrics magazine shows that ''across all age groups through age 15, unrestrained children in the front seat had the highest risk of injury while optimally restrained children in the rear were always at the lowest risk.''Children in the front seat were 40 percent more likely to be injured compared to rear-seated children, the study shows.For appropriately restrained 13- to 15-year-olds, there was no additional risk when they were seated in the front row as compared to the rear row.''It's generally appropriate for teens to ride up front,'' says Dennis Durbin, M.D., who whose co-principal investigator on the on the survey, ''but only if they are using a lap-and-shoulder seat belt correctly.'' Durbin and his team determined that if all children under 16 years of age had been in age-appropriate restraints in the rear, more than 1,000 of the 3,665 serious injuries that occurred in the study sample would have been prevented.The study was sponsored by The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, the American Academy of Pediatrics and State Farm Insurance Co., which is the world's largest insurance company.The findings of the PCPS study are based on information from the records of more than 370,000 State Farm policyholders who were involved in car crashes.
Child safety study shows how to protect kids Keep them in the back of the biggest vehicle possible