Population considerations
- High prevalence. Automobile accidents are the leading cause of death and injury for American children.
- Misuse of safety seats. Although child seats can greatly reduce fatal injury to children, they are often misused as well.
- Difficulty in maintaining seat use. As children grow older, they are at increased risk for injury because they outgrow their safety seats.
- Unsafe state laws. Parents may rely on the law to decide whether to use a child restraint seat. However, most states only require booster seats up to the age of 4.
- Unfocused target. Most automobile safety programs are directed towards parents of newborn infants while research suggest that seat restraint use decreases as children get older.
- Rural location. Child deaths in automobiles are significantly higher than in urban locations. Rural populations use seat restraints for children less often than urban populations.
Strategies to address these considerations
- Encourage parents to make using booster seats a non-negotiable ritual. Parents with this attitude were found to have more luck with convincing their children to use the seats.
- Parents often feel it would be easier to “sell” the concept of using a booster seat to their children if the laws were upgraded to match their ages.
- Public education programs are needed to increase knowledge regarding the proper age to which children should use booster seats.
- In rural areas, information regarding the importance of child restraint devices needs to be distributed.