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Please be (booster) seated

It's time to drive home the need for these lifesavers

By
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Originally published in Today's Parent November 2007

Almost half of the Canadian children under 10 who die in car accidents are four- to eight-year-olds wearing seat belts, but not in booster seats.

That’s the most compelling child safety stat I have ever seen.

According to data from Transport Canada, 60 of the 100 Canadian children who die as passengers in car accidents in an average year are in the four-to-eight age group. Forty-eight of them should have been in a booster, according to recommendations, but wore only a seat belt.

When you put that together with research showing that proper use of booster seats improves kids’ safety by 59 percent, it suggests that a potential 28 young Canadian lives could be saved each year if all kids aged four to eight used booster seats.

I’m stunned that we aren’t getting this statistic drummed into us. I mean, think about the campaigns designed to get peanuts out of schools, eliminate baby walkers and prevent strangling deaths caused by window blind cords. Those are all legitimate concerns, but none of them has caused anywhere near the loss of life experienced by school-aged kids in car accidents.

Experts have been recommending widespread booster seat use for a few years. Quebec, Ontario and Nova Scotia have laws requiring children to be in boosters until they reach a certain size or age; BC and Newfoundland’s laws come into effect next summer. In other provinces, though, they’re optional — unlike car seats for younger children and infants.

Parents have been slow on the uptake, as a study by Anne Snowdon, a professor at the Odette School of Business at the University of Windsor (Ont.), shows. Based on observations of more than 10,000 kids in cars at intersections across Canada, Snowdon’s team estimated that only 28 percent of four- to eight-year-olds were in a booster or a car seat. The rate of correct use of car seats for kids under four was much higher, at 67 percent — though well short of perfect.

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