The Fundación MAPFRE 2016 dossier on child road safety in cars in Spain and Latin America: child restraint systems 2016
Fundación MAPFRE 2016
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If a six-month-old baby is traveling in the lap of an adult it will automatically be thrown forward in the event of an accident and would be severely crushed by the person carrying it. In the case of a six-year-old child sat in the back seat but without a booster cushion, the movement of the seatbelt could cause severe neck injuries, and their body could end up sliding out below the seatbelt with fatal consequences.
By using an approved child restraint system (CRS) appropriate to the weight of the child this would not happen, in that the seatbelt would work properly and check the child's movement, minimizing the risk of sustaining an injury.
These are some of the conclusions of the report on child safety in cars in Spain and Latin America, produced by Fundación MAPFRE. The objective of the study is to analyze the most frequent and dangerous mistakes that parents make when traveling with their children, such as not using a seatbelt or wearing them too loosely, and to provide information on the areas of the body most susceptible to critical injuries that can occur when an inadequate CRS is employed.
Fundación MAPFRE has carried out numerous crash tests that trial different child restraint systems in both correct and incorrect situations, as well as examples of when unapproved or aging systems are employed and others in which there is no child seat at all.
A number of different parameters were studied for each test such as the acceleration of the chest and the horizontal and vertical movements of the head of a doll as well as logging the signals from sensors on dummies to assess the risk of injury that could occur in the event of an accident.
Additionally, the dossier analyzes child traffic accident data in Spain and the current situation of child safety in cars in Latin America.