ABSTRACT
@#The use of child restraints such as car seats or booster seats inevitability increases with the implementation of laws mandating its use in the general public. This is of great importance to child health and injury prevention as child restraint use has been shown to reduce the risk of serious injury by 71% to 82% for children less than 1-year-old, and 45% for children aged 4 to 8 years old.2,3 In terms of averting death, child restraints were associated with 28% reduction in risk for death.4 It has been found that using ageand size-appropriate child restraints is the best way to save lives and reduce injuries in a crash.5 It is reasonable, therefore, that one study that investigated the association between child restraint law implementation and traffic injury rate among 4 to 6 years old children in New York State found that these children experienced an 18% reduction in traffic injury rate. (See full-text for continuation).
Subject(s)
Humans , PediatricsABSTRACT
Objective To understand the safety-related riding behaviors of 0-to 6-year-old children and to analyze their parents' awareness of the safe riding thereof.Methods Self-administered questionnaires were used to make investigations on the parents of the 0-to 6-year-old children described as follows.Several 0-to 3-year-old children's parents who owned private cars and sent their children to schools/back home by cars daily were randomly selected from the planned immunization/children's health clinic of 10 community health service centers in Changning District of Shanghai,the parents of these children were surveyed.Several 4-to 6-year-old children's parents who owned private cars and sent their children to schools/back home by cars daily were randomly selected from the kindergartens therein,the parents of these children were surveyed.SPSS 17.0 was used in relevant statistical analyses.Results A total of 3 509 persons were investigated.The means of their riding in private cars were shown as follows, in order of proportion, from the highest to the lowest: using child restraint system(CRS) (44.1%), sitting in laps of adults(28.1%), sitting by themselves with seatbelts(18.0%)and sitting by themselves without seatbelts (9.8%);with the increase of age, the proportions of using CRS and sitting in laps of adults decreased and those of sitting by themselves increased.Almost 90% of child passengers were habitually rear-seated, but 1.8% thereof sat in the CRS seats installed in front and 7.2% thereof simply sat in co-pilot seats in front without any safety restraints.The overall awareness rate of the parents for the core knowledge of the CRS seats was 67.1%, only 23.8% of the respondents surveyed knew all the core knowledge.The rate of using CRS seats by parents was positively correlated with the relevant knowledge and attitudes of the parents for CRS seats(x2=357.8, P<0.001).For the parents who believed that using CRS seats is the safest way of riding, the rate of using CRS seats by their children was also the highest.Parents with higher levels of education and higher incomes tended to have higher levels of awareness.Conclusion Compared with foreign developed countries, the rate of using CRS seats by 0-to 6-year-old children is relatively low in Changning District.The rate of using CRS seats by parents is closely related to the relevant knowledge and attitudes of the parents for CRS seats.Parents have a low level of awareness and misunderstanding of safe riding.It is necessary to strengthen the publicity and education, especially for the awareness of children's safe riding for families with relatively low levels of education, thus urging parents to take more reliable children's safe riding measures so as to ensure thesafety of children's riding.
ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: To determine the effects of pre-discharge education for the correct use of child occupant restraints (CORs). METHODS: Between January and August 2012, education for the correct use of CORs was provided to parents at the time of discharge of their newborns from our neonatal intensive care unit. A cross-sectional survey using self-report questionnaires or telephone interviews was conducted when the children were 6 to 12 months of age, and the acquired data were compared with data from a control group. RESULTS: The overall percentage of children using CORs was 73.4% for the COR educated group and 69.9% for the control group. However, the percentage of children who correctly used CORs was 42.2% for COR educated group and 44.3% for the control group. There was no statistically significant difference in parental awareness and perception of the correct use of CORs between the two groups. CONCLUSION: The correct use rate of CORs in our community is still low, and no difference in the correct use of CORs was observed between parents who were educated before discharge of their newborns and those who were not. Therefore, an alternative strategy, such as a strong enforcement program, is needed to increase the correct use of CORs.