Children at risk in cars

SHE was only about three, a pretty, fairhaired child enjoying an outing in the family car. She was clearly visible in the vehicle in front as the traffic lurched in a stop-start motion through town in the rush hour.

Then suddenly, she disappeared. A rash of brake lights had come on ahead, we all stopped urgently, and the little girl was lost from sight. She had been standing, unrestrained, in the space between the two front seats, occupied by two securely belted adults. As the car nose-dived, so did she.

Happily it all happened at relatively low, London rushhour speed. But that was no excuse for the serious danger to which this child was being subjected.

Unstrapped, she could so easily have become not just a loose missile in the car, but another tragic accident statistic.

Too many unrestrained children are travelling in cars. Although most youngsters riding in the front seat are strapped in, it is, unhappily, much more common for children in the back to travel unstrapped.

A survey carried out by the Transport Research Laboratory in April showed that five per cent of children under 13 who are front-seat passengers do not wear any form of seat belt. Although the vast majority of very small children are strapped in as rear seat passengers, fewer older children are.

Among five to nine-year-olds, 13 per cent travel unstrapped in the back.

It rises to 17 per cent of 10 to 13-year-olds, and children aged 14 and over are among a shocking 42 per cent of backseat travellers riding unbelted.

It is a scenario that is all too familiar to Dr Gregor Campbell- Hewson, consultant in accident and emergency medicine and a specialist in paediatrics, at the Addenbrooke Hospital in Cambridge.

"It can be a desperately sad business," he says of the young road crash victims he sees in A and E. "I can think of several examples where children have sustained very serious injuries or died in traffic accidents who might well have escaped injury and survived if only they had been restrained.

"For example, a child lying on the back seat asleep, not strapped in, and the car is involved in a crash at say 40, 50 or 60 miles an hour. The child is catapulted forward and receives massive head injuries against the dashboard or windscreen.

Adults wearing seat belts in the same accident may be uninjured."

Unstrapped children are particularly vulnerable to injury in a road accident because of the way their body proportions differ from that of an adult, says Dr Campbell-Hewson, himself a father of three young children.

"In an adult, the head is nine per cent of the body surface area. In a baby, it is 18 per cent. A child's head is disproportionately heavy compared with an adult's.

Over the age of one, the most common cause of death in children is injury or trauma, and the commonest single cause of traumatic death is head injury."

He finds it distressing to see children riding on an adult's lap in the front seat, and cannot comprehend why people do it. "It's the same as sitting a child on the handlebars of a motorbike travelling at speed, and would anyone seriously consider doing that ?"

Strapping a child into a lap-belt, with just a strap across the abdomen instead of a conventional three-point seatbelt, is little better than no belt at all, he says. "If the car stops suddenly, the child is thrown forward and its nose meets its shins. It can bust the back and cause serious internal injuries.

I'd like parents to think hard about the dangers they're exposing their children to."

Child safety in the car

The law requires anyone travelling in the front seat to wear a seatbelt.

In the back, everyone, including children (under 14) must belt up if seatbelts are fitted. It is the driver's responsibility to make sure they do so.

Children under 12 and under 5ft are legally required to use restraint aids if available. Failing to strap children in when the law requires, could cost you a pounds 60 fine. It is unsafe to put a small child, or a baby in a child seat, in the front seat if there is an airbag, unless it is deactivated. Children under 12 and under 5ft are legally required to use restraint aids if available.

Unbelted, a child is three times more likely to die in an accident than one wearing a seatbelt. Check out the government's website: www.think.dft.gov.uk/seatbelts

Copyright 2002
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