|
| |
SAFETY TIPS
Seat Belt & Air
Bag Safety
Seat
Belts and Air Bags save lives.
All of us - especially parents and caregivers - need to understand how to
minimize risks by maximizing the life-saving capabilities of these safety
devices.
KIDS
RIDE IN BACK.
Infants should NEVER ride in the front seat of a vehicle with a passenger
air bag. Children, typically ages
12 and under, also should ride buckled up in the back seat.
CHILD
SAFETY SEATS.
Young children and infants always should ride in age- and
size-appropriate child safety seats. The safety seat should be held properly in
place by the vehicle's safety belts and the child should be correctly buckled in
the child safety seat. A child who
has outgrown a convertible child safety seat will need to ride in a booster seat
for the vehicle's safety belts to fit properly.
WEAR
BOTH LAP AND SHOULDER BELTS.
The shoulder strap should cross the collarbone, and the lap belt should
fit low and tight. The shoulder
strap should never be slipped behind the back or under the arm - this is a
dangerous habit, especially in cars with air bags.
MOVE
THE FRONT SEATS BACK.
Driver and front passenger seats should be moved as far back as possible,
particularly for people of shorter stature.
Seat
Belt Safety Information
Fasten
Your Lap Belt . . .
-
Sit
up straight. Slouching causes
the lap belt to ride up. A belt
worn too loosely could allow you to slide under it in a crash.
-
Check
your lap belt several times during a trip, even a short one.
Make sure it stays low and snug.
In some lap/shoulder belt systems, a tug on the shoulder belt will
tighten your lap belt.
-
Consider
clothing. A heavy coat can make
it difficult to wear your belt correctly.
For very bulky coats, it's best to take them off.
To get the best possible fit when you wear your coat buckle up and
then tuck any excess bulk towards your side.
This will allow the lap belt to make proper close contact over the
pelvic bones. A short jacket
can easily be pulled out from under the belt.
-
Always
buckle up, even if pregnant. Make
sure the belt stays snug and well below your abdomen.
Adjust
Your Shoulder Belt . . .
Air
Bag Information
The
Purpose of Air Bags
Air
bags are designed for frontal impact crashes, the kind that account for more
than half of all passenger vehicle occupant deaths. Air bags are designed to
limit head & chest injuries, but they only supplement safety belts.
They don’t replace them.
Number of Motor Vehicles Equipped With
Air Bags
According
to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, over 95 million (47%) of the over
203 million cars & light trucks on U.S. roads have driver air bags. More than 68 million (33%) of these also have passenger air
bags. By law, all new passenger
cars since the 1998 model year are required to have driver and passenger air
bags and safety belts. Light trucks
became subject to the same requirement beginning with the 1999 model year.
The Benefits of Air Bags
-
Air
bags save lives, an estimated 1,043 in 1998 alone.
-
The
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that the
combination of an air bag in addition to lap and shoulder belts reduces the
risk of serious head injury by 81%, compared to 60% reduction for belts
alone.
The Risks of Air Bags
-
During
pre-crash braking, an unrestrained passenger may be thrown against the
dashboard area in immediate proximity to an air bag.
Since air bags inflate in less than 1/25th of a second, faster than
the blink of an eye, drivers and passengers who are unrestrained or are
wearing only the lap portion of their safety belt can receive serious or
even fatal injuries from deploying air bags.
-
The National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has identified 96 crashes
where the deployment of the passenger air bag resulted in fatal head or neck
injuries to a child. Eighteen of these deaths were to infants in rear-facing child
safety seats. Most of the other
78 children were determined to be completely unbuckled, "out of
position," or wearing only the lap portion of the safety belt
(improperly restrained) at the time of the crash.
Immediate Solutions
-
Infants should NEVER ride in the front seat of a vehicle with a
passenger air bag.
-
Children ages 12 and under should always be properly restrained in
a child safety seat or safety belt and ride in the back seat.
Even if there is not a passenger-side air bag in the motor vehicle,
the safest place for infants and children is properly secured and buckled up
in the back seat.
-
Safety belts, both lap and shoulder, should be used with air bags.
Safety belt use, currently at over 70% in the United States, needs to
increase.
-
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, an
estimated 112,086 lives were saved by safety belts from 1975 through 1998.
In 1998 alone, 11,088 lives were saved by safety belts.
Air
Bags Work - They Save Lives
They
do their job best when everyone is buckled and kids are properly restrained in
the back seat.
An
air bag is not a soft, billowy pillow. Rather,
to work effectively, an air bag deploys at rates of up to 200 miles per hour -
faster than a blink of an eye. Drivers
can virtually eliminate any danger to children from a deploying air bag by
properly restraining kids in the back seat.
With or without an air bag, the back seat is the safest place for them to
ride.
As
the number of motor vehicles equipped with air bags increases, the risk to kids
riding in the front seat will also increase.
That is why people must understand that air bags save lives and work best
when everyone is properly seat-belted and kids are safely buckled up in the back
seats.
|
