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Safety of Traveling Children

ARC Network Member Article
By Dan Goor
July 5, 2002

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is in process of releasing its long awaited revised Standard (FMVSS-213) regarding safety of traveling children. The proposed revisions, for the first time to include biomechanical measurements as part of the standard, a very welcomed step in the right direction.

The new standard is a significant improvement over the standard as it now is, and as it has been for the last few years. In spite of improvements, a number of items are neglected that should be addressed.

Consistent with the way regulations have been in the last few years, infants, those under one year old, are not dealt with as a separate entity, but are lumped into a group from birth to four years of age; this is wrong.

Since the biofidelety of infants changes significantly early on in life, much more attention need to be given to that age group. For example, when an infant reaches a year in age, or twenty-two pounds (but also based on individual assessment of each individual infant), it is suggested that the infant be moved from a rear-facing to a forward facing means of transport. By virtue of that simple move, it is obvious that infants do require special care as their body undergoes significant changes, but the general rules, and most statistics, leaves them out.

Based on statistics from the Center for Disease Control, there are 845 accidental (unintentional) fatalities of infants every year. The next age group, one to four years of age, has a total of 1,459, an average of 486 per year, about half of the number for infants, shouldn't these simple numbers suggest that infant require more care?.

Consistent with the unique needs of infants is the fact that a rear-facing child in the back seat of a vehicle is very difficult for a driver to watch, much more difficult than a a forward facing older child. It stands to reason, and supported by a number of studies, that based on NHTSA information driver distractions are a major cause of crashes, a driver alone in a car with a rear-racing infants in the back seat is subject to significant and often crash causing distraction by said infant.

The new NHTSA proposed rules will only use twelve months, and older dummies for biomechanical evaluation of children; a real oversight. The six months CRABI (Child Restraint Air Bag Interaction) dummy presently available could help bridge the gap, or chasm, if you will, between infants and older children. Rules, and biomechanical standards must be put in the Standards to deal with infants under one year of age. The rules must at least from evaluate newborn, to six months old babies; jumping to twelve months is ignoring reality. By-passing premature babies may not be the wrong thing in this case, as the number is very small, and by the nature of that group, it does get special care.

It is true that: All infants are children, but in contrast not all children are infants. Infants do require special care.

There are about 4,000,000 new births in the United States, and infants are the future. Infants constitute the largest group in society without a political voice, they require all the Governmental support they can get, they should not be ignored.

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