How Car Seats Protect Infants in a Crash

Series Summary

What could be more important in the car than making sure your child is safe? Car seats are designed to protect your infant from harm during a car wreck or or any other roadway malady. Properly installing and using the child safety car seat is not altogether intuitive, but it is, however, essential. Car seat technicians are experts at ensuring that the car seat does what it is supposed to do: protect your child. Consequently, they are the true experts when it comes to properly using a car seat. Take the time to learn how to properly use a car seat, from our expert car seat technicians.

In this free online video series, learn from car seat experts Dan Fugang and Judy Slattery as they teach you all about car seat safety for your infants and kids. These expert car seat safety technicians will teach you why aftermarket car seat parts and attachments can be dangerous. They will show you how to find the best car seat for your child, types of child restraints, how to use the infant car seat base, how to install a based infant car seat properly, how to use a forward facing child car seat, how to use a combination child car seat, how put a rear facing car seat in your car, why car seat boosters are essential, how to test a car seat booster, how to clean a car seat, what to do with a car seat after a crash, and how a pregnant mom should wear a seat belt.

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Dan on behalf of Expert Village. In this segment we're going to talk about the types of crashes and the safest seating position for your child. There's basically four types of crashes; there's the frontal impact, the rear end impact, the side impact and the rollover. The most common is the frontal impact, but the most deadly would be the side impact and the reason for that is there's very little of the vehicle between the sides to help stop that intrusion. So the safest seating position in almost every circumstances is going to be the second roll center. Center being furtherest away from the door. Also the safety experts recommend that until the child is at least 12 years of age they should always be in the back seat, it's much, much safer. We know that riding rear facing like in an infant seat like this, is the most safest. What actually happens in a crash is there's a lot of force generated and the seats are designed to help absorb that force, that's called ride down. That ride down is effect is the seat absorbing the energy in a crash. In the case of this rear facing seat, what happens is the seat will rotate forward in a frontal crash like this and rebound back into the seat back and then come to rest. The infant's head, neck, shoulders, spine and hips are all supported and they're going to press equally into that shell. The shell is going to take the impact, the brunt of the impact. Which again is the best for the lady. "