Kids’ Auto Safety Gets a Boost From the ‘Big 3’
A week before the accident, Barbara Halvey was just another parent whose kid was riding in a child safety seat that wasn’t right for her and wasn’t correctly installed.
But thanks to a visit to a DaimlerChrysler auto dealer, 3-year-old Monica was in a new booster seat secured in the safest part of the back seat when her mother’s Ford Contour was slammed from behind by a Lincoln on Good Friday. The mother was banged and bruised, but Monica had not a scratch.
“I wasn’t even aware my daughter was at risk,” said Halvey, who lives in Powers Lake, Wis. “Now a lot of my friends are taking their vehicles in.”
Many parents by now have heard that selecting and installing a child seat is not as easy as it seems. More than eight in 10 get some detail wrong. But few are aware that in the last year, a national network has sprung up to offer families expert technical assistance and, in some cases, free car seats.
Thanks in part to much cajoling--and threats of public humiliation--from National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Jim Hall, the Big Three U.S. car makers have pledged close to $50 million to help parents. That amount would fund a small federal program, but what’s really striking is the new role the auto industry is taking on.
“I never thought I would live to see the auto companies scramble for competitive advantage on the issue of child safety,” said Chuck Hurley, a longtime officer of the nonprofit National Safety Council. Car makers traditionally have dispensed safety advice through the vehicle owner’s manual, in words carefully vetted by corporate lawyers and seldom read by consumers.
But car buyers have become more safety conscious, a trend the industry cannot afford to ignore.
“Fifty million dollars is probably the size of one product liability lawsuit,” Hurley said. “It’s very much in the companies’ interest to be able to say they’re doing everything they can to make sure children in their vehicles are properly restrained.”
The importance of properly securing children in safety seats was underscored by a study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics. Researchers from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia found that kids ages 2 to 5 who are strapped in with adult belts are more than three times as likely to suffer significant injuries in crashes as those riding in safety seats. The study also found that parents were prematurely allowing about 40% of the children to “graduate” to adult belts.
The amount of information and assistance for parents is growing daily. Only a year ago, local organizations--such as SafetyBeltSafe U.S.A. in Torrance--toiled in obscurity on child passenger issues. General Motors was funding the National Safe Kids Campaign, which conducts educational efforts and child seat safety checkups.
Then in April 1999, Hall, who heads the government’s safety watchdog agency, gave a speech that garnered a lot of attention. He castigated the auto industry for ignoring kids’ safety, even as motor vehicle accidents continue to kill more children than anything else.
By last summer, DaimlerChrysler had announced its “Fit for a Kid” program. Volunteers from dealerships would undergo four days of training to teach parents the do’s and don’ts of child passenger safety. In the Los Angeles area, 15 DaimlerChrysler dealerships now offer families a free half-hour child seat checkup, by appointment, no matter which make or model they drive. Nationally, 1,000 dealers will offer checkups by the end of the year.
“We have said we will keep it up for as long as it is needed,” said Sheila Gruber McLean, a DaimlerChrysler spokeswoman.
GM was not about to be left behind. In January, the company announced it would provide 51 vans--one for each state and the District of Columbia--to perform mobile child seat checkups, regardless of the make or model of the car.
It also went into partnership with the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Council of La Raza, Gen. Colin Powell’s America’s Promise volunteer group and the United Auto Workers to give away $5 million worth of child seats to low-income families. (In Los Angeles, La Raza already is giving away seats, and the NAACP’s program is expected to begin this summer, according to Deane Leavenworth, a Safe Kids volunteer coordinator who also is an aide to City Councilwoman Laura Chick.)
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But Ford was slow to respond. This March, Hall prepared to give another child safety speech--and let it be known that he would rebuke the company.
“We were going to say some very negative things,” an aide said.
The day before the speech, Ford officials called the safety board chairman. They were planning a program to give away 1 million booster seats--half of them to needy families and the other half to customers, the company said. Booster seats are a newer--and critical--development in child safety. Booster seats are high-backed pads or benches that position heavier, older children so that adult lap and shoulder belts will safely hold them in a crash.
“Fortunately, we were able to explain to Jim Hall what we were working on,” said Sara Tatchio, a Ford spokeswoman. “Fortunately, he did not have to criticize us, because we did not deserve any criticism. This program was going to happen no matter what.”
Ford’s giveaway is expected to begin this fall, and the company will also sponsor an auto safety curriculum for 154,000 elementary schools and day care centers.
Mobilizing the Big Three is not enough for Hall. He has expressed “disappointment” that most foreign car makers have remained aloof to the problem. Hall is looking for a good opportunity to lambaste them, an aide said. Meanwhile, U.S. manufacturers are exploring the creation of an industrywide child safety organization.
“There are discussions around that right now,” said Greg Martin, a GM spokesman. “We’re all drawing from the same people in the child passenger safety community. It’s a close-knit community, and the lines of competitive demarcation seem to fade.”
For Barbara Halvey, the safety advice and high-backed booster she got on loan from a local DaimlerChrysler dealer made all the difference. Otherwise, she said, there is a high likelihood that her daughter Monica would have been seriously hurt.
Before Halvey received the high-backed booster, Monica had been riding on a bench-type child seat that didn’t work with the shoulder belts in the family car. The new booster allowed her to take advantage of the shoulder belt, not just a lap belt.
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Moving the booster to the middle of the back seat was even more important. Before, Halvey had placed Monica directly behind her. But her driver’s seat collapsed backward in the wreck.
“If Monica [had been] behind me, that would have hit her,” Halvey said.
(Federal safety standards for front seat strength in autos are widely acknowledged to be inadequate, but despite the Transportation Department’s advice to put children in the back, it has not required car makers to resolve this safety issue.)
There was rejoicing at Miller Motors, the Burlington, Wis., dealership where Barbara Halvey got her child safety checkup, after the staff learned that the program may have saved little Monica’s life. Lyn Henriksen, a sales staffer and one of the trained employees who assisted Halvey, is still on an emotional high.
“In my role as a salesperson, I’m often looked at as a bad guy,” Henriksen said. “This was a chance to do something good for our community.”
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Resources for Young Riders
Parents can contact these organizations for assistance.
Who: DaimlerChrysler’s “Fit for a Kid” program.
What: Free child safety seat checkup.
How: Call toll free (877) FIT-4-A-KIDto find the nearest participating DaimlerChrysler dealer, or visit https://www.fitforakid.org on the Internet. Appointments can be scheduled by calling a dealer directly. Usually, a parent can get an appointment within a week. Checkups take about a half hour.
Who: SafetyBeltSafe USA
What: Torrance-based organization with wealth of information, local contacts, favorably rated Web site.
How: Call toll free, (800) 745-SAFE, or, for Spanish, (800) 747-SANO. Parents can conduct an online car seat checkup at https://www.carseat.org.
Who: National Safe Kids Campaign
What: A group that offers a wide range of safety information, a calendar of child seat checkups in every state and a child car seat locater that helps parents determine what kind of seat to shop for.
How: On the Internet at https://www.safekids.org.
