Children’s Jackets Can Cause Car Seat Failure
There are lots of challenges in getting a small child in the car during the winter—First, there’s the skirmish to get all that winter gear on your child before you leave the house, then a cold and wet trip out to the car, and then the struggle to buckle your child’s shoulder restraints around a bulky jacket. While it may make car travel even more complicated, research out of a leading car safety facility has found that jackets may cause car seats to become fatally unsafe.
A study conducted at the Transportation Research Institute at the University of Michigan looked at how wearing a large winter coat could affect an infant or toddler in a front facing car seat. The researchers used a toddler-sized dummy wearing a down jacket, and simulated a car crash occurring at 30 mph. While the test dummy appeared to have been snugly restrained prior to the crash, the child flew out of the car’s shoulder restraints and flopped down so that only the lap belt held them in the seat. This could lead to serious injuries for the child.
In fact, even during non-winter months, the most common error made when securing a child in a car seat is failing to ensure that the shoulder straps are sufficiently snug. While it may feel as though you are making the straps uncomfortably tight for the child, experts recommend that shoulder straps be sufficiently snug that you can fit no more than two fingers underneath the strap at the child’s collar bone. In order to determine if the child’s coat is putting them in danger of slipping out of the seat, strap the child into the seat while wearing their coat, and then strap them in while wearing normal clothes, without adjusting the restraints. If the restraints are very loose, then you should not allow the child to wear that coat in the car. Consider dressing the children in thinner, warmer layers that fit more closely to their body, such as a fleece jacket, or placing a blanket on top of them while they’re in the seat.
If your child has been injured in a car accident in New Jersey, contact the seasoned Wayne personal injury attorneys at Massood Law Group for a consultation on your case, at 1-844-4MB-HURT.
