There has been a great deal of controversy over car seats for infants and babies. After a number of deaths from having infants in car seats facing forward and in the front seat, car seat manufacturers, the government, and child safety advocates began looking at solutions that would ensure maximum safety for infants and babies in car seats. These efforts also included parent awareness regarding different needs for different infants and babies and maximum ways of ensuring child safety through placement and positioning of car seats. Car seats may appear similar on the surface, but the popular “one size fits all” concept does not apply. Manufacturer’s guidelines now outline specific car seats for different weight infants and babies, “Infant seats face backward and are for newborns up to 20 pounds and 1 year old; front-facing seats are for babies over 1 year and weighing between 20 and 40 pounds; convertible seats can be rear- or front-facing for babies from birth through 40 pounds; and high-back booster seats can go from 20 to 70 pounds” (Vercelletto, 1999, 1).
There are two reasons why children have been killed as a result of car seats not providing enough safety during a crash. The first is faulty manufacturing and the second is lack of proper use of them by parents. Both of these causes are preventable and statistics show that properly manufactured and properly used infant and baby seats prevent deaths but parents often use them improperly or fail to use them, “If we could get parents to use car seats correctly every trip, 90 percent of the deaths and 70 percent of the injuries could be preventable” (Hurley, 1998, 1). Every state in the U.S. now requires car seats and seat belts for children. However, doctors, health experts, safety advocates and others agree that at least half of the time car seats are not used properly or used at all. Typically, injuries for infants and babies in car seats involve the head, a...