Booster seat report ranking seat safety may mislead some parents
A new report published by the Insurance Institute for Highway safety is claiming some are better than others.
A quick shopping trip for Tracy Bostic can turn out to be time consuming when she brings along her kids.
"I have a 7, a 5, a 3 and 7-month-old," she said.
The mother of four uses car seats and booster seats for all her children. The hard part isn't buckling them in, it's finding the right fit.
"It is difficult because my daughter, she's seven and she's kind of tall," Bostic said.
Adding to the stress of finding the perfect seat, is this new report from the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety .
It ranks more than 40 popular booster seats that parents can find on store shelves.
Rene Hopkins, the safe kids coordinator for our area says, "Statistically speaking one third of children are in the wrong type of restraint altogether."
Hopkins says the report can be misleading.
"They were using a standard mannequin. That mannequin didn't change its proportions when it was tested from one seat to another," she explained.
Research suggests 25 per cent of children in wrong car seat
TONY EASTLEY: A Queensland researcher says about a quarter of children are at risk of being killed or injured in a car crash because they aren't in the correct restraint.
National laws were rolled out last year but it appears many parents are confused about which seats are appropriate.
Research suggests people from non-English backgrounds are more likely to be using the wrong device.
Kerrin Binnie reports.
KERRIN BINNIE: Researchers say each year 60 to 80 children are killed on the country's roads - the number of serious injuries is more than 10 times higher.
ALEXIA LENNON: If children are not properly restrained they do stand, yes, a higher chance of being injured and there are cases where that's happened.
KERRIN BINNIE: Dr Alexia Lennon is from the Queensland University of Technology's Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety.
She has examined the use of child restraints in Queensland since the states and territories rolled out uniform laws last year.
