Front seat fatalities involving children decline

Fatalities involving children 12 and under in the front seat have dropped 46 percent from 1996 to 2003, according to a study Wednesday by the Air Bag & Seat Belt Safety Campaign of the National Safety Council. The actual number of such deaths during that time span declined from 586 to 314.

The private safety group found the overall number of child fatalities in vehicles slid 18 percent during the same period.

The study examines progress made since 1996, when the government and safety groups became concerned about child fatalities involving air bags, which peaked at 31 deaths in 1997.

The study appears in the upcoming issue of the National Safety Council’s Journal of Safety Research.

“This is the clearest evidence we’ve seen that the national public health campaigns begun in 1996 to get children properly restrained in a back seat are working,” said Phil Haseltine, executive director of the air bag campaign, a partnership of automakers, insurance companies and safety groups.

Since the height of the fatalities, the government and safety groups have aired public service campaigns to make parents aware of the importance of placing children in the back seat of vehicles and properly restraining them.

Using government data, researchers said there was evidence that restraint use has increased among young children, with toddlers between the ages of 1 and 3 wearing restraints 90 percent of the time, compared with 60 percent in the mid-1990s.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recommends that any infant up to 20 pounds should be in a rear-facing child seat and any toddler weighing 20 to 40 pounds should be in a child seat with a harness. A child heavier than 40 pounds but not yet 4 feet 9 inches tall should be in a booster seat.

Safety advocates said the study represented solid progress but they stressed the need to teach new parents the safest ways of driving with their children.

“We must never let our guard down, especially in educating new parents,” said NHTSA administrator Dr. Jeffrey Runge. “We need to constantly remind them that kids under 12 always should be properly restrained in the back seat on every trip.”

———

On the Net:

Air Bag & Seat Belt Safety Campaign’s Kids in Back: http://www.kidsinback.org/

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration: http://www.nhtsa.gov