1 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Summer 2002
Child Passenger Safety
INSIDE
TECH REPORT - Summer 2002
Tether and LATCH Use Varies
with Combination Seats 2
New Vehicle Safety
Features for Children 2
LATCH-Tether Updates 3–4
Recalls 5
AAA CPS Certification Update
5
AAP Refines its
Child Restraint Use
Recommendations
In March, the American Academy of
Pediatrics (AAP) issued its revised policy
statement, Selecting and Using the Most
Appropriate Car Safety Seats for Grow-
ing Children: Guidelines for Counseling
Parents.
The new AAP statement covers issues
such as keeping infants rear-facing up to
at least age 1 and at least 20 pounds. It
advises keeping a child over age 1 rear-
facing if he still fits within a rear-facing
CR in terms of weight and height. It em-
phasizes booster use until lap and shoul-
der belts fit correctly, and continues to
advise against the use of shield boosters for
children of any size. It advises caution re-
garding the use of active side-impact air
bags adjacent to the seats where children
sit and encourages families to consider
purchasing vehicles with built-in CRs. The
statement refers physicians to certified
CPS Technicians for technical advice.
For the complete text, see the AAP
website, www.aap.org/family/cps.htm
SRN, March/April 2002
High Injury Risk in Rear Seats
of Smallest Pickups
A study from the Partners for Child
Passenger Safety Project concluded that
children riding in the back seats of compact
extended cab pickup trucks* have a much
higher
r
isk of significant injury th
a
n ch
il
dren
in rear seats of larger extended cab pick-
ups and other passenger vehicles. The risk
in “full-size” extended cabs
i
s generally
com-
parable to passenger cars. The lowest risks
were in the back seats of passenger vans.
The Partners project, a collaboration
of Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania
and State Farm Insurance, examines
crashes involving children in post-1989
State Farm-insured vehicles in 15 states
and the District of Columbia. As a study
of insured families, this group is not rep-
resentative of the entire U.S. population.
However, the project is the largest collec-
tion of detailed data on crashes involving
children.
Contrary to the general rule that rear
seats are safer, in a crash the injury risk in
the front
seat of pickups with compact ex-
tended cabs
is strikingly lower than the risk
in the back seat. In the back seat of the
compact pickups with extended cabs, the
serious injury risk is 13 percent, as op-
posed to 1.6 percent in the rear seats of
passenger cars and only 0.9 percent in
vans. The risk of significant injury in the
front seat of compact extended cab pick-
ups is 2.8 percent, slightly less than that
for front seats of passenger cars (2.9 per-
cent). This increased risk in the back seat
was true for both restrained and unre-
strained children.
The conclusion of the study: “The
compact extended-cab pickup truck does
not appear to be the optimal choice for a
family vehicle.”
*Definitions: The study’s definition of com-
pact and full-size extended cab pickups is based
on gross vehicle weight, a maximum of 4,500
pounds for compact extended cab vehicles. For
CPS purposes, compact, full-size, and crew cabs
have different amounts of legroom and types of
seating. The compact extended cab is very con-
Two Studies from
Partners for Child Passenger Safety
fined, having jump seats or miniature bench seats.
The full-size cab has a somewhat deeper bench
seat in back and a rather thin seat back. The
crew cab is even larger. Intended for adults, a
crew cab has approximately the same space as a
compact four-door SUV.
Reference
“Rear Seating and Risk of Injury to Child Oc-
cupants by Vehicle Type,” Winston, F.K.,
Durbin, D.R., Kallan, M.J., Elliott, M.R., 45
th
Annual Proceedings, 2001, AAAM, 847/844-
3880, www.carcrash.org
A Snapshot of Booster Use
The Partners for Child Passenger
Safety Project has released a study on
booster use by children between 2 and 8
years of age who were in crashes between
Dec. 1, 1998 and Nov. 30, 2000. “Trends
in Booster Seat Use Among Young Children
in Crashes” reported that, of 53,834 children
in that age group, 11.5 percent were us-
ing a booster seat at the time of the crash.
Approximately half of the children (many
of those in the 2-to-4 age range) were us-
ing shield boosters rather than belt-posi-
tioning boosters, although all of the ve-
hicles they were riding in were made after
1989 and should have had shoulder belts
in the rear seat outboard positions.
Booster use peaked at age 3 and
dropped dramatically after age 4. During
the two years covered by the study, booster
use among 4- to 8-year-olds rose from 4
percent to 13 percent.
Reference
“Trends in Booster Seat Use Among Young
Children in Crashes,” Dennis R. Durbin, et
al, PEDIATRICS, December 2001. Contact:
Partners for Child Passenger Safety, Shannon
SRN, March/April 2002
Are You Ready
for LATCH?
See pages 3 & 4
for product-related
updates
Watch the NHTSA
website
www.nhtsa.gov
for educational
materials to promote
and explain LATCH
(24 pages)
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