Safety Devices Make Infants Secure
Accidents, though not intentional, happen without warning. A major category of accidents is traffic collision. This leads to injuries, deaths and damage to properties. The United States has relatively better safety standards. Modern technological advances have been deployed in both the vehicles and traffic management. Yet the number of dead exceeds 40,000 per year. No doubt, the traffic accident rates and causality rates have declined. Still the number of people affected by traffic collision is also increasing. The increase in the population, and more traffic and travelers mean more casualties.
Safety devices and systems are of two types – the active and the passive safety devices and systems. The active safety devices and systems are those that require the occupant of the vehicle to act such as fastening seat belt. The passive safety devices and systems are those that operate on its own such as air bags on sudden jerks or collision.
Children are more vulnerable to accidents amongst all travelers. Being lighter and smaller than adults, they are more prone to being thrown off or dislodged on impact from collision or sudden jerks. Active seat belts as well as air bags are definitely useful. But special safety measures are required to be adopted for children according to their age, height and weight. Such safety measures are required to be adopted as per regulations in some countries. Child seat and child safety locks are part of such measures. Power window lockouts are useful to prevent the children from interfering with the windows and doors.
There are specially designed seat for infants. These infant safety seats are secured to the automobile seat. When there are sudden jerks or collisions, the infant seat belt holds the child firmly. These are now a part of the safety regulations prescribed in some countries. There are different models of infant seat belts on sales in the market. Britax Frontier Seat has advanced shock-absorption and cushioning. These are also easy to set up.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe introduced ‘Regulation R44-04’ as the international safety standard for child and baby seats. The International Organization for Standardization too has come out in 1990 with its own safety standard called ISOFIX. The equivalent of this standard in the United States is the LACTH. ISOFIX compliant seats are available in some automobiles.