Most Ontario kids still not in boosters.
Despite the introduction of booster seat legislation in several provinces, use among Canadian children aged 4-8 is still alarmingly low, new research suggests. Ontario kids were most often observed properly seated in boosters – yet even there, only a third of kids were correctly seated in the age-appropriate seats, researchers for AUTO21 concluded.
Ontario now has booster seat legislation in effect, which may be one reason it fared better than other provinces. The research prepared for Transport Canada found that booster seat use was lowest in Newfoundland at just 5.3% of the restrained 4-8-year-olds. Newfoundland has just passed its own booster-seat legislation, to take effect in 2008.
The research on 13,500 children across Canada, ranging in age from infants to age 14, was conducted in summer 2006. It involved observations at 187 intersections and interviews with willing drivers in nearby parking lots. The release calls it ”the most detailed and comprehensive study on children’s restraint use ever conducted in Canada and the first in 10 years.”
The group notes that 4-8-year-olds experience about 10 times more deaths and injuries during car crashes than babies and toddlers, who are more likely to be properly strapped into child car seats.
Study highlights
- Overall, 88.5% of children were in restraints of some kind, with the remaining 11.5% of children sitting completely unrestrained; 22.9% were sitting in the front seat.
- 63.3% of the infants were observed correctly strapped into safety seats.
- 67.3% of toddlers were properly seated in age-appropriate child car seats.
- Just 28% of children who were of booster seat age were correctly strapped into boosters.
- Older children (9-14) were observed correctly fastened into seatbelts in 98.9% of cases.
The researchers note the high number of children wearing seatbelts suggests parents want to do the right thing for their children – but for various reasons may not. Older children, for example, may view sitting in boosters as being “for babies.”
“It is critical to the welfare of our children that we get the word out on not only using booster seats, but also the dangers of not using them,” said Ann Snowdon of AUTO 21.
“Kids are dying and being injured at an alarming rate – about 100 children in Canada under the age of 10 die in vehicle collisions every year – and in 80% of cases it’s seatbelts causing harm because children from ages 4 to 8 don’t fit in them properly without a belt-positioning booster seat.” For more information
Download the report and news release
AUTO 21 is a national research initiative supported by the government of Canada.