Baby Car Seat Injury

Thousands of children each year are catastrophically injured or killed on America's roadways, parking lots and driveways. On some occasions, no design principle would have prevented the tragedy. On the vast majority of others however, safety designs directed toward protecting children would have prevented these tragedies. Yet, the vehicle and child safety industries refuse to take responsibility for these needless injuries and deaths. Instead, they choose to routinely blame parents and others for safety problems they have created.

Who should be held responsible when a child dies or is maimed when his child seat fails to provide adequate restraint? Who should bear the financial burden when a seven year old, rear seated passenger submarines under the lap belt or rolls out of the shoulder belt and is paralyzed because the restraint system was designed for a 170 lb. adult male, rather than a 70 lb. female child? Who is to blame when a power window fatally strangles a child because the child placed her knee on the rocker switch and raised the window? Even more importantly then who bears responsibility is the following question:

HOW SAFE ARE OUR CHILDREN IN OUR VEHICLES?

Children are the most precious cargo we will ever place in a vehicle. As such, no child should be left behind when it comes to vehicle safety. If the vehicle and child safety industries are not going to protect children equally, then the government should intervene. After all, Thomas Jefferson once wrote that “the care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and legitimate object of good government.”