With everyone heading out on summer road trips, your local Pennsylvania Toyota dealership wants to inform families on appropriate child seat installation and use. A little known fact, three quarters of all children’s car seats are incorrectly installed. This is perhaps the leading contributor to the high child mortality rate in car accidents, which is one of the leading causes of childhood mortality in the U.S. This can easily be significantly reduced through the proper installation and fastening of child seats into the car.
In order to ensure that your child is safely buckled in, make sure the seat does not wiggle more than an inch once strapped in. Follow all the guidelines in your child seat manufacturer’s installation manual to ensure that you are not improperly installing the seat. When buckling your child into the seat, be sure to remove any bulky or loose clothing, as this may give an illusion of the straps being tight, however upon the impact of a collision, will compress which could lead to the injury of your child. By the same token, you should also not pad the seat with excess padding or towels.
Finally, as your child grows, routinely check the guidelines of their child seat to ensure that it still offers them optimum protection for the height and weight. If they exceed the guidelines, replace the old car seat with a new one. This should be continued until your child can properly wear a seatbelt without the need of a booster, which could be as late as age 12 or 13.
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