If you are a parent, you understand the risks your children face when they are traveling in your car, truck or SUV. For that reason, you never leave home without securing your kids in height- and weight-appropriate car or booster seats. Still, you may need to think about where your children ride.
According to reporting from NBC, your vehicle’s backseat may not be the safest place for your kids. This is likely to surprise you, as safety advocates have long hailed the backseat as the optimal place for the young ones in your family.
Seatbacks may fail during a car accident
Even though the front seats in your vehicle seem sturdy and secure, the mechanisms that hold them upright may be alarmingly fragile. During a collision, these mechanisms may malfunction or break. If so, the front seats in your vehicle may collapse backward.
This puts young passengers seated in the back in danger, as failed front seats may harm them. Accident-associated crush injuries can be catastrophic, as they often include broken bones, nerve damage and internal organ injuries.
You can reduce the risk
Eventually, car manufacturers may decide to reinforce the mechanisms inside the front seats of the vehicles they sell to consumers. Until then, you can take one simple step to reduce the injury risks your children face.
Whenever possible, consider placing your children behind a vacant front seat. This reduces the weight that may land on top of your son or daughter after a seatback failure.