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4 Tips to Improve Infant Car Safety
In order to improve infant car safety, there are a number of requirements you, as a responsible parent must take. First and foremost, children are required to be seated in rear facing car seats until they are at least one year old. It used to be one year old or 20 pounds, whichever came first, but that has been largely modified. A belt positioning booster is used when the child is old enough to face forward. It raises them up to the proper height so they are able to use the waist belt and shoulder strap of a normal seatbelt. A tether strap is used for forward facing car seats. It has a hook on the car seat that latches onto the appropriate place on the car’s frame under the seat ensuring the car seat cannot fly forward in an accident. Because both of these are used with children who are facing forward, they are precluded here.
What follows are a few tips that will help keep your infant safe while driving. However, no amount of safety features can be a substitute for safe, responsible driving. The tips you read here are meant to complement responsible driving and to protect your infant should something unexpected happen.
4 Infant Car Safety Tips
- Always use the car seat: It may sound obvious, but it needs to be mentioned. When driving with your infant, always place them in the car seat, and always buckle them in. If the baby is fussing or needs to eat, do not remove him from the car seat. Either wait until you get to your destination or stop the car.
- Back center: Position your rear facing car seat in the center of the bucket seat in the back of your car. Statistically, this is the safest location for your infant to be while riding in a car seat.
- Make sure buckle is not too loose: Even though the car seat is properly fastened with the seatbelt, if the adjustable buckle that secures your baby is too loose, it could cause an injury in an accident. Therefore, make sure the strap is pulled tight when the baby is fastened into the seat, although not too tight to injure him.
- Pick an infant car seat with a high safety rating: Choose an infant car seat with high safety ratings and many protective features. The Chicco Keyfit 30 Infant car seat is one such model. It works for children from 4 to 30 pounds and provides easy installation, adjustment, maximum comfort and safety for your baby.
Ensuring that your infant is safe while driving in the car is the duty of every parent. A properly fitting and correctly installed infant car seat is necessary for children under a certain weight. Infants and children under one year of age must ride facing backwards in their car seats. Although they may fuss because of it, it is a rule intended to keep them as safe from injury as possible when driving.
