Rear-facing car seats should be made mandatory for children up to the age of four, a European road-safety group said today.
The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) said 18,500 children under the age of 14 had died on European roads over the last ten years - 1,200 in 2007 alone.
An ETSC survey published today showed Portugal had achieved the best annual average reduction in road deaths among children with an average annual decrease of 15 per cent between the start of 1998 and the end of 2007.
Ireland - along with France, Slovenia, Switzerland and Belgium - also ranked highly with reductions close to 10 per cent per annum on average over the 10-year period. However, Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, the Czech Republic, Greece and Romania preformed badly with average annual reductions of less than 5 per cent.
Under existing EU children under three cannot travel in a car unless they are restrained in the correct child seat. Children over that age, who are under 150cms in height and weighing less than 36 kilogrammes, must use the correct seat, booster seat or cushion.
Sweden, which has made rear-facing seats mandatory for children under four years of age, has the lowest child mortality rate from road collisions between 2005 and 2007.
However, Brian Farrell of the Road Safety Authority said the main concern in Ireland was the number of parents not strapping their children into cars at all and the large number who use safety seats incorrectly.
“What we suggest is that you should be rearward facing up until at least a year. Beyond that you can be forward facing,” said Mr Farrell. “The child’s neck hasn’t developed enough to avoid a whiplash situation, and that’s why you have children going rearward facing.
“The next message I’d be giving out is not that children should be rearward facing until four years of age but that you invest in a child car seat that has good side wings to protect the head in case of a side impact, because that is the greatest risk a child faces if they are involved in a crash on the roads in a car.
Mr Farrell also said Isofix fittings for child car seats, while more expensive, were the safest option. These allow seats to be attached to hooks that are directly connected to the car’s chassis. Most post-2002 made cars are fitted with Isofix connections.
“We have an 80 per cent misuse rate on child car seats in this country, with 60 per serious installation errors. So they’ll provide little or no protection in the event of a crash.”
He said the ETSC suggestion of forcing those aged four and under to remain in rear-facing seats was “not necessarily over the top, but we have some really key things to get right first.
“If we could get parents keeping their children rearward facing until they’re at least one year of age we’d being doing well. If they were belting them in properly and using the right car seats . . . we would be doing really really well. So I think we have some basic things to get right first before I think we can start talking about this.”
Mr Farrell pointed out seven children under the age of 10 died on Irish roads last year, compared to six in 2007.
