SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, Calif.—Sunday evening, a rollover crash off Highway 101 in Los Alamos injured a woman and a 4 year old child.
The child was restrained by a seat belt, but not an age-appropriate car seat or booster seat.
“Even though they were restrained by a lap belt and a shouldeR belt when they were at that size. A four year old tiny bodies are not meant to be restrained by those. Restraint systems are meant for adults. So very lucky that that child was not thrown from the vehicle and in and did not slide out of the restraint system” said Santa Barbara County Fire Spokesman Scott Safechuck.
Safechuck says roughly half of all accidents in Santa Barbara county lead to injuries.
He says car seats are one of the first things they inspect when going to a vehicle accident.
But even those who use car seats need to be wary.
“People actually install the wrong the wrong car seat. It's not meant to fit their child size or their weight,” said paramedic-turned-fire inspector Melanie Dennon.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says nearly half of car seats are misused.
“I’ve seen car seats go from one side of the car to the other in an accident with the child still in it. I've seen car seats ejected from the car with the child in it,” said Dennon.
California law requires all children under 2 years old to ride in a rear-facing car seat, unless the child is 40 or more pouNds or is 40 or more inches tall.
“People turn their children around too fast and that increases the risk of a spinal injury and a head injury,” said Dennon.
Once a child reaches these milestones, all children under the age of 8 years old are still required to be secured in a car seat or booster seat, in the back seat.
Children 8 and older, or who are at least 4 feet 9 inches tall, may be secured by a booster seat, but at a minimum must be secured by a safety belt.
“Double check your car seat, make sure they're the right size to be, to move from a car seat to a booster and then from a booster to a regular seatbelt. And then go get your car seats checked,” said Dennon.
Properly installed car seats have been shown to reduce fatal injury crashes by 71% for infants under a year old and by 54% for toddlers ages 1 through 4.
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