Parents need to place their children into the proper car seat every single time they travel. Doing so ensures that the impact of an accident will be lessened and that children will be properly protected. Unfortunately, a new study from Safe Kids Worldwide has found that not all parents are stringent when it comes to car seats.
The General Motors Foundation partnered with Safe Kids for the poll, which found that 21% of parents believe it to be acceptable to transport children without a car seat if the trip is relatively short. That’s despite the Philadelphia-based Center for Injury Research and Prevention’s estimation that three in five collisions take place within a ten minute radius of a person’s home.
More than 1,000 individuals took part in the survey, and to qualify, the parent or guardian had to take care of a child younger than ten. The findings go even further to highlight the types of demographics that tend to have this lax attitude. Only 15% of parents in an income bracket of less than $35,000 said such car seat-less transport was acceptable on short trips, but a whopping 34% of those whose household income was six figures or more said the same. Persons holding graduate degrees were also more inclined not to heed car seat requirements on short trips.