Child Safety Still A Problem – How Did NHTSA Fail To Protect American Children?
June, 2015
The NY Times reports on good work by the IIHS:
“Installing a child safety seat in a vehicle has been a confusing, sometimes difficult task for many parents. A new study released on Thursday has backed up many parents’ complaints, finding that only a handful of vehicles deserved the highest rating for ease of installation.
The study, conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, rated 102 vehicles for how easily a child safety seat could be installed. It focused on the vehicles’ so-called Latch system, which consists of three anchors that the seat is secured to.
Only three models received the highest rating of Good: the BMW 5 Series, Mercedes-Benz GL-Class and the Volkswagen Passat.” See
NHTSA data on deaths of children in crashes restrained and unrestrained in fatal crashes (413 under age 8 in 2013) is at
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/812154.pdf
For more than a century children have been dying in crashes restrained and unrestrained.
In 1980 NHTSA published a report on Automobile Occupant Crash Protection. (Disclosure: I edited this report that was cited by the Supreme Court in overturning the Reagan Administration’s rescission of the airbag rule.) That report listed models of cars that had problems with child restraints. See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/assets/1980fullreport.pdf
When will NHTSA require all auto companies to design vehicles to better protect children? Will it happen while the NHTSA Office of Crashworthiness Research and its Human Injury Research Program are both headed by former GM officials?
Lou
