A well-fitted car seat is your child’s safety line

Dorah Musiimire did not get her son a car seat until he was 18 months old. Although she used to travel a lot, with some trips requiring her to take her son along, Musiimire delayed getting him a child restraint because she could not find one that could be easily adjusted. 

“When I travel with my son, a car seat holds and keeps him in one position. The seat belts require one to be of a particular size and when they are used on a child, they run across their head, unlike the child restraint that is adjustable and holds them firmly,” Musimire says.

“When the child sleeps, the restraint is raised to support the neck, thus preventing neck pain. When driving in potholes, the child is not affected because the effects of rough roads are absorbed by the car,” she adds.

Musiimire, however, says there are downsides to using child restraints. Some of them, she says, are not made for old or used cars. To make it usable, she improvised to tightly strap it in a particular way using the seatbelt before her son was able to use it. 

“Where you put it also matters. It is supposed to be placed where you can keep an eye on the child through the driving mirror. It has to be behind the co-driver’s seat. If the restraint is in the middle of the passenger seats, if not correctly strapped, in case of abrupt braking or a head-on collision, the child will be pushed to the dashboard area or under the windscreen,” Musiimire explains.

Other measures

The child restraint is sometimes not enough to secure the child. You have to apply other indoor child safety measures such as locking the windows and doors so that they are only opened from the central lock. As the child grows, they learn to unbuckle the restraint and unlock doors. You have to understand their ability because you may think they are in their restraint when they are not.

Categories

Adrine Natuhwera Ntenga, a parent, says child restraint categories range between those used by children from zero to 12 years. There are restraints where a child sits upright as though they are in a chair, and baby restraints that recline and are meant for a particular age (approximately six months), where a baby can comfortably sleep.

“My daughter stopped using the car seat when she was seven years old. Sometimes, children will not like to be strapped into a car seat because they do not want to be confined to one place. So, when they can understand why, train them on how and why they must use restraints,” Natuhwera explains. 

Mable Tomusange, a parent and road safety advocate, says child restraint usage in Uganda is very minimal due to limited knowledge and ignorance about their use, especially among parents. The attitude towards restraints, she has observes, is considered a Western culture, not meant for Uganda or Africa.

“As a parent, you can judge whether a child is ready to use a seatbelt. For example, when your child sits in the car and their knees are at 90 degrees of the seat, the child is fit to use a seatbelt. If the knees are not at 90 degrees, it means the child cannot use a seat belt and should be in a restraint,” Tomusange says.

Tomusange, however, urges the government to not only carry out public awareness campaigns about child restraints but also put in place a regulatory framework about the quality and usage of children’s restraints since different child categories use different-sized restraints.

When not fastened properly, children who are supposed to use them remain at risk of dying in road crashes. 

Why restraints are key

Child restraints, just like seat belts, do not prevent crashes, but they save lives. In the case of a road crash, the severity of injuries with a restraint is lower compared to when a child does not use one. The child can also die or become permanently disabled. If you are driving at, for example, 120km/hr and the child was not in restraint and you are involved in a head-on collision or harsh instant braking, your body will be ejected from the car through the windscreen at the same speed. Chances of survival become very minimal.

On average, depending on where you buy it from, a child car seat costs approximately Shs350,000 and above, depending on the make. Much as they are expensive, do not think about cost when it comes to life. The consequences come back to you the parent.

Car crash survival

Modern vehicles are designed to reduce crash forces on occupants by absorbing some of the crash energy. Restraint systems protect passengers in crashes by effectively tying them as tightly as possible to the car. This prevents excess movement and allows passengers to make the best use of safety features built in modern cars.

These features aim to ensure that in a road crash, passengers come to a stop over the longest possible distance, reducing the force and, therefore, risk and severity of injury in a crash.

But in tying the passenger to the car, it is important that the forces applied to the body are distributed over the strongest parts of the body and the motion of the body is controlled. This is where the design of child restraints comes in.

When to move to an adult safety belt

Legally, your child must be in an approved child restraint until they are seven years old, but to reduce the risk of injury it is recommended they remain in a booster seat until they can safely fit a vehicle seat and seat belt. Many children need a booster until they are around 12 years old.

It is best to keep a child in a booster seat until they are 148cm tall and pass the five-step test:

Your child can sit right back on the seat.

Their legs bend comfortably over the edge of the seat. 

The shoulder belt comes over their shoulder, not against their neck. 

The lap part of the seat belt sits low on top of the thighs, not up around their stomach. 

Your child can stay seated like this for the whole trip.