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September 17, 2010 - Child Safety Week is September 19-25, and for good reason. Car crashes are the leading cause of death of children ages 3 to 14, and 2010 is on course to be a record-breaking year for the number of children who die from heat-stroke in parked cars.
An average of four children under the age of 14 are killed every day in motor vehicle crashes in the United States. But many injuries and fatalities are easily avoidable. Simple things like locking the power windows and using a booster seat can make cars much safer for children nationwide.
The number one thing to remember when it comes to children and cars? Teach children well. Rollaway deaths, backover deaths and trunk entrapment can all be significantly decreased by teaching children not to play in or around cars, and to move away from a vehicle when a driver gets in and starts the engine.
Safety seats are another big component of safe driving with infants and toddlers. Using them in passenger cars reduces fatal injury by 71% for infants and by 54% for toddlers between the ages of 1 and 4.
Vitally important is ensuring the seats are installed correctly. Nearly 75% of them are not, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). You can find a safety seat inspector by clicking on the NHTSA website. Parents should know that children progress from rear-facing, to front-facing, to booster seats to seat belts - in that order and according to manufacturer's directions for height and body weight. And all children under the age of 13 should ride in the back seat.
A final precaution: Never leave children or babies unattended in a closed vehicle, even for a minute. The heating and cooling process for toddlers is vastly different than it is for adults, and that makes them particularly susceptible to overheating in a locked car or trunk. According to NHTSA, even cool temperatures outside (in the 60's), can cause the car's interior to hit 110 degrees Fahrenheit and higher. The inside temperature can rise almost 20 degrees within the first 10 minutes! What's more, children's bodies overheat easily - infants and children under four years old are less able to lower their body heat by sweating. That means that inside a hot car, a toddler's body temperature can rise three to five times as quickly as that of an adult, which can lead directly to heatstroke and death.
Let's make Child Safety Week just the start of our rising awareness of children's safety!
To read the full article from Forbes.com, click here.
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