Parents go to great lengths to keep their children safe. They buy them safety equipment—like bike helmets—for dangerous activities, they take them to the doctor when they’re sick, and they work hard to keep an eye on them at all times. However, children are still tragically killed all too often, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that one of the main reasons for these deaths is car accidents.
In some senses, this is no surprise, considering how often adults are killed in wrecks. However, the true issue here is that the CDC said many deaths were preventable.
In one study, 3,500 car seats and booster seats were examined. A shocking 72 percent of them were not being used properly. The study claimed that the seats actually increased the odds of death, rather than decreasing them, because of this improper usage.
When car seats are used properly for infants, the CDC said that the risk that the child will die in an accident drops by a full 71 percent. For toddlers, the drop wasn’t as drastic, but it still came in at 54 percent. If kids between the ages of four and eight used booster seats, the risk of significant injuries dropped by 45 percent when compared to kids who just used seat belts. For older children, just wearing a seat belt drops the odds of death or a serious injury by 50 percent, when compared to children who didn’t wear belts at all.
If your child was riding with a driver who didn’t use proper safety devices and he or she was killed, you may have a right to compensation in California.
Source: FIndLaw, “Car Accidents: Leading Cause of Childhood Deaths,” accessed April 27, 2016