In the next few days, many families will travel by car to go out and enjoy their vacations. One of the fundamental premises when getting into the car is to have the necessary security measures to avoid any misfortune in the event of an accident.
It is very common to make mistakes when installing the child restraint system, so we show you a list of the most common problems to evaluate if you use the car seat properly in the car.
The most frequent mistakes when traveling with children in the car
The complete list includes 19 errors that you can know through the Child Road Safety site of the Mapfre Foundation, but we will review the 7 most common mistakes:
1) Travel with the child in arms or sitting on the lap or knees of adults. Not even with a seat belt. If the adult uses it, the child can be projected forward against the dashboard or the windshield, and if not used, it can crush the child.
2) Let them travel without using the child seat: sometimes, because it is a short journey, or because children protest, they are allowed not to use the chair or go without holding.
3) When parents do not use the seat belt. The example is essential to educate our children. We cannot force them to put on their belts if we do not, children learn by imitation. In addition, it is terribly dangerous: an adult without a belt can, with his weight, crush the child with the force of the collision.
4) Go too early to a higher child seat group: Especially when we have more than one child, for practicality we often make changes that can compromise the safety of children, especially passing too soon from the seat of the group 0+ in which the child looks back, which is the orientation safer, to start using a group I seat facing forward. Each group is suitable for a specific age and weight and we must respect those criteria.
5) Install a child seat facing backwards in a seat with active front airbag. All the seats incorporate a safety label in which it is forbidden to install the chair in front of a front airbag, except if it has been previously deactivated. In the event of an accident and opening of the airbag, it would catapult the child seat back and at full speed.
6) Leaving the child seat to the car seat too loose. It is important to check that the belt that secures the seat to the vehicle is properly tensioned, and does not show any slack.
7) Install a baby chair too horizontal or too vertical of those who look back. The backrest should form an angle with the vertical line between 30º and 45º, the seat should be more lying for smaller babies or newborns, and progressively more vertical as the baby grows.
