NEWBERRY COUNTY — Within the last month, Newberry County Department of Social Services Director Ken McBride has received multiple comments from the community on one simple, but important topic — kids not being restrained properly in car seats.
“Kids are not being restrained at all and they’re just sitting in the back seat or they’ve seen them come through different drive-thrus throughout the county and they might be hiding in the floor board, but they’re not restrained in any way,” he said.
According to McBride, half of all accidents are usually within five miles of someone’s home — he said that adults can’t just look at proximity and say ‘I’m just going a mile or two down the road, that nothing will happen’ because they never know what will happen.
“With the seat belt laws, we need to make sure that, especially children, are strapped in properly because if they’re not, you might be going slow, but if somebody else is going fast they can cause the car to spin and eject the child out the back windows, side windows — we’ve had them ejected out of the front,” he said.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, reports show that in the field, car seats, booster seats and seat belt misuse rates vary from 74-90 percent.
Titilayo Robinson, CPS assistant, recently participated in a car seat training where she and others learned the proper way to put in a car seat.
“On our last day (of training), we basically had to complete a safety belt check which we put out to the community in the Columbia area and we actually had parents with kids come and they brought the kids in the seats the way they use them,” Robinson said.
A lot of the parents, according to Robinson, did have seats, but none of them really paid attention to the instructions on the car seat as far as the child’s weight and the way the seat goes in.
“So they may just have the child sitting in the seat not strapped in or not properly strapped in — if it was an infant, having the infant rear-facing and now with the law changing it’s two years old of rear-facing depending on the weight of the child,” she said. “A lot of them had turned their kids around at one since that’s what they’re used to, but now that the age has went up people are still feeling like ‘well, it’s better because my child wants to see me’ so they’re turning them the opposite direction instead of keeping them rear-facing longer.”
Although it may sound minor, Robinson said clothing also impacts a child’s safety in a car seat.
“A lot of people during the winter time or just taking the kid out to the car they put these big coats on them which we recommend not doing simply because if you put a coat on a child and then you’ve got this seat belt restraint to another level it’s not going to hold the child completely in the seat — it’s actually changing the posture of the seat so we recommend light clothing, nothing big, nothing heavy,” she said.
Robinson said parents also need to keep in mind loose objects in their vehicles.
“Those need to be restrained as well because you may have something as small as a book that in reality you wouldn’t think ‘oh, that couldn’t do any damage,’ but if that book is going 50 miles because you flipped over or something you could really injure a child or adult. The same thing with a child — if they fly out of a car seat people think ‘I can stop them’, but they can hurt you just by being in the front seat because now the speed speeds up because of the force of that wreck,” she said.
With a seat belt, according to McBride, the strap has to come across the shoulder, but not against the neck. For a smaller child, they would need a five point harness.
“If you put a small child in the car with a regular seat belt, that seat belt isn’t really going to hold the child up — the purpose of a car seat is to make sure a child is being properly held in the seat,” he said.
McBride added that even some booster seats have five point harnesses which are able to be adjusted up or down.
“People think ‘booster seats are just so they can see,’ that has nothing to do with where the strap goes across the shoulder — the lap belt has to come across the lap just like it would with me and you. If it’s against the stomach it’s not working,” he said.
Robinson said that the lap belt should sit under the waist around the pelvic bone areas.
She added that sometimes it isn’t even about the speed someone is driving that can cause injuries to a child or adult.
“We watched a video of someone simply backing out of their yard, but that doesn’t stop the car that’s going 50-60 miles coming at you while you’re backing up — it will actually have more force on you because you’re not moving and they are so the impact it’ll have to you is more dangerous even though they’re going the higher speed,” she said.
With more cars coming through Newberry every day, McBride and Robinson said these are just a few things to take into consideration when getting in a car — a lot of which can go from zero to 60 miles per hour in a short time compared to cars made years ago.
“The car matters too because everybody’s seat belt is different (retractor, anchor, wedge and retractable),” she said. “Some cars even have air bag seat belts, I had never heard of that. We actually had a car pull up after learning this and the parents didn’t even know they had them — and they’re actually dangerous for kids. People think they help, but in reality they are dangerous.”
Robinson said the air bag seat belts can be turned off, but you still would not be able to sit the child there because there is always the possibility that it will still inflate.
She added that not knowing about something as simple as an air bag seat belt is common among people when getting a car —along with not being familiar with their car manuals.
“When you get in a car you look more at the gadgets and the things you like, but you don’t think of asking if there is an air bag in the seat belt or things of that type,” she said.
There are certain things parents can do to assist with certain car seats, according to Robinson.
“I know with a lot of the infant car seats we use noodles just because not all of them have that angle that’s needed, so you can use little noodles just to wedge under the car seat, put it at the right angle — just to hold it tight and make sure it’s firm enough and it’s not moving around,” she said.
Other parents asked about using towels to avoid messing up their cars. Robinson said that it is okay to use a towel, but to avoid stacking them.
“Nothing that’s stacked up, more flat and tucked under the seat maybe, but a flat surface still so it’s not changing the car seat’s posture,” she said.
In addition to maintaining good seat posture, the chest piece also needs to be in the correct position.
“At the chest level, but under the armpits — a lot of people were putting them at the belly thinking ‘oh, I’ll sit it at the belly and that’ll hold the child’, but we actually showed the parents a child could slip out if there was an accident and you have it at belly level — that gives the child room to slide out if, God forbid, the car flipped,” Robinson said.
During Robinson’s training, they also noticed a handful of people come through with used car seats. She said it is okay to use a used car seat as long as you know the history of that seat.
“Has it been in any wrecks? Is it missing any pieces? Does it have all the original parts to the seat? Has it expired? Any recalls? Say someone lost the harness to the seat, but they found one from another one and snapped it on — now that car seat isn’t exactly manufactured so it can’t guarantee the same safety as it would had that been the right harness,” she said.
Robinson also stressed to parents to make sure the seat is compatible with the car.
“Certain car seats, depending on the vehicle, the way the seat’s made, we had a car that pulled up and the car seat recommended the anchors be used, but it only had one anchor and she had two toddlers — now you’ve got one seat that can be used for an anchor and the other one you can’t use,” she said.
McBride encouraged the parents to always check the expiration dates on their car seats which can be found on any car seat.
“The reason for that is because these car seats are sitting in cars getting up to over 100 degrees on a constant basis. So however hot that car gets, the car seat gets that hot and that plastic breaks down from the heat,” he said. “It can look like it’s perfect, but after that expiration date, you could have an accident and that car seat just crumbles because of the stress the car seat has been through due to all the different changes of hot and cold. Plastics, along with other things, expand and contract — they get malleable and then when they cool down, get more brittle.”
It is not recommended to use a car seat after it has been in an accident.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, motor vehicle crashes and unintentional injuries are leading causes of death for children 14 and younger.
South Carolina state law permits a child under eight years old to sit in the front seat using the proper age appropriate child restraint, but only when a vehicle is without a rear passenger seat or when all passenger seats are already occupied by other children under eight years of age.
For children ages eight to 12 years old they must sit in a booster seat until they are big enough to properly fit in a seat belt — the Center for Disease Control (CDC) suggests that no child under 13 sits in the front seat of a car.
Children under two are also now required to ride in a rear-facing car seat while children under eight or under 57 inches tall are expected to ride in a booster seat.
Parents can also reach out to the Newberry County Sheriff’s Department for help with assessing their car seat(s).
“The main thing for us is even if it’s just going next door, put your child in properly restrained because you don’t know who’s going to be flying around the corner. You might think it’s safe, grandmother picking up a child may think ‘we’re only a few miles away from the home, we don’t need the car seat’ — that little distance we never know what will happen and accidents traumatize everybody involved not just the parents that lose that child,” McBride said. “My main concern is that folks realize they always need to be in their car seats, booster seat — that strap has to fit right as they move up and hold the child in the seat appropriately because like I said, we want to be proactive instead of reactive.”
