Injuries from car accidents among New York children ages 4 to 6 have declined since the implementation of a law requiring them to be strapped into car booster seats, researchers recently reported. Most U.S. states now require that children who have outgrown traditional car seats use a car booster seat, which raises a child high enough so that the car seatbelts can be positioned properly — with the shoulder strap across the shoulder and not the neck, and the lap belt across the hips.
The new study conducted by the journal, Pediatrics, is the first to compare injury rates before and after the 2005 New York law mandating booster seats. Researchers with the state health department compared traffic injury rates among children in that age group during the two years before the law was implemented with rates across the three years after the law took hold. They found that traffic injury rates among 4- to 6-year-olds decreased 18 percent between the two time periods — from an average of 29 per 10,000 children to 25 per 10,000.
Website Resource:
Child injuries drop after N.Y. booster seat law, MSNBC (Reuters), August 9, 2010.
