The choice of child car seat matters
Our decision about which child car seat to buy will be with us for years to come
Road Safety
Let’s imagine that we have a serious collision with another vehicle. Let’s imagine that a child is traveling in the car. Let’s imagine that in the first millisecond of the collision we enter a time tunnel that takes us back to the day and the exact time when we bought the car seat for our child.
What would we think about at that moment? Are all child seats created equal? Is it the same if it is forward-facing or rear-facing? If it is approved, is that enough? Is it the same to buy a child seat in a department store as in a specialized retailer? At that moment, in that first millisecond of the accident we are having, we would want to have had the best specialist by our side advising us on the best child seat available, and we would have bought it without a second’s hesitation.
Having a road accident is a situation beyond our control, because when we drive we are in a hostile environment that we are not in charge of. That is why all the questions we have just posed are the ones we must ask ourselves when we go to buy a child seat for our little ones.
Unfortunately, at the moment of the crash we have no time tunnel, and the decision we made that day in the department store, or the specialized outlet, will be with us for better or worse for the rest of our lives.
And not all child seats are the same, nor are they equally effective in the event of a collision. When acquiring a product that is going to be present in our lives for around 10-12 years, we need a professional to advise us and help us make the best decision. We should distance ourselves from other people’s opinions, from what friends say, and from the “We didn’t use a child seat and nothing happened to us” mentality, which is still very common nowadays.
In Spain, child seats became compulsory in 2002, and over the past twenty years there has been a drastic reduction in infant mortality in traffic accidents, bringing the figures close to those of benchmark countries such as Sweden. Now, our outstanding issue is to reduce the number of injuries caused by road accidents and, in this respect, the child seat we ultimately purchase is crucially important.