Small Children ARE NOT SAFE When Sitting In Front
Seeing children, without seat belts in the backseat, or sitting on their parents’ lap, is becoming a common occurrence in Malaysia. FACT! Small Children are not safe in the front seat. Small Children are not safe when placed on the parent’s lap in the front seat as well.
If you are involved in any of these below accidents …… your child will be seriously injured or worse!
Back in November 2020 we highlighted this in an article which made many parents understand the need to invest in a baby seat and also made some parents upset with us for highlighting this as ‘it is none of our business’ as some of them commented.
Well, the dangers for children sitting in the front seat include the powerful airbags in modern cars, which are often fitted in front passenger seats which if deployed in an accident can suffocate the child.
Also, with the child sitting on the parent’s lap and not using a seatbelt, the child can be squashed by the parent and the hard dashboard If the driver happens to brake hard in an emergency.
Small children can also sustain injuries from adult seatbelts that do not fit them correctly. Research shows that children are safest travelling in the back seat.
A child is safest in the back seat and strapped safely within a child safety seat. These measures prevent a child from being hurled toward the front windshield from the back of the seat.
What is the Child Safety Seat Issue?
Malaysian Consumers Association president Datuk Amarjit Singh Gill, mentioned that passenger safety applies to children and adults. He mentioned that it is important for steps to be taken to make seat belts compulsory. This is because such a mandate would save many young lives. The amendment that is being pushed and revised at this time is the Road Transport Act of 1987.
Why are Child Safety Seats Important?
Child safety seats lower the risk of car accident deaths in babies by 71 percent. It reduces the risk of child accident car related accident deaths by fifty-four percent. This is for children between one and five years old. Because people are in their vehicles, and aware of only themselves usually, they do not realize that there are thousands of cars, buses, motorcycles and other vehicles on the road every day.
They are not aware of the fact that children are at a dangerous risk when they are not wearing seatbelts. It’s very much like a ticking time bomb, according to Datuk Amarjit Singh Gill. Even cars traveling at low speeds, and collisions happening in these conditions, could prove fatal to infants and children. In a collision, children become like bullets that ricochet within a car, finally being flung out at high speed through a window. This usually, unfortunately, proves fatal.
