We're a team of business, employment, and specialist motoring solicitors and this is our first blog on the Bradford Kickstart website featuring legal advice about issues that could affect you and your business.
Our first article is actually not strictly business related, but is important none-the-less.  This week is Child Safety Week 2009. So, this a timely opportunity for a small reminder about one of the simplest road safety precaution: if you have young children keep them in a safely-fitted rear facing car seat for as long as possible.
Rear-facing seats tend to be more effective because they protect children from lower neck and chest injuries, which can prove fatal and keep the head, neck and spine fully aligned so that any force, such as from a crash, are distributed across the body.
The statistics are shocking. Rear facing seats were found to be 75 per cent more effective by scientists in the US who looked at information on 870 car crashes involving children between 1998 and 2003. Another study undertaken in Sweden suggested that over a seven year period half of the children who died in accidents where front facing “booster” seats were used could have been saved had they been using rear-facing seats. Whilst this advice is borne out by statistics, the problem in the UK is that many of the rear facing seats are not usable by children over 9Kg (20lbs). Therefore children over about eight months have to be carried in normal front facing child seats.
So, is this an issue that car seat manufacturers, and vehicle manufacturers, are looking into? Should parents be calling upon manufacturers to make rear-facing seats for older children more available?
In addition, there is concern that car-seat manufacturers are not making the safety implications as clear as they should. Recent research on this issue was carried out by Dr. Elizabeth Watson, a Surrey GP, and Dr. Michael Monteiro, a specialist registrar at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford, and was published in the British Medical Journal. It criticised the current weight-range labelling of European seats, as it might imply that forward-facing seats are as safe as rear-facing seats for children over 9kg.
The law on child car seats can also be confusing. Jonathan Wright, a partner at the motoring solicitors Keepmedriving, said “not all parents realise that they may be committing an offence if they do not carry their child in an appropriate seat. It is a simple fact that many parents are quite unaware of how dangerous using the wrong type of seat can be, and the lives of children are being unnecessarily placed at risk as a result.”
The law is not prescriptive as to the nature of the seat which must be used, although it does contain guidance on when a reward facing seat must not be used. It states that the driver is responsible for ensuring that all children travelling in cars use the correct child form of child restraint until they have either reached a height of 135 cm or the age of 12 - whichever comes first. Children over that age or height must use an adult seat belt. It is the driver's responsibility to ensure that children under the age of 14 years are restrained correctly in accordance with the law.
The law does state that it is illegal to carry a child in a rear-facing child seat in the front of a car where there is an active frontal airbag. In other words, unless there is no passenger airbag or it can be switched off, then a rear-facing child seat may not be used in the front.
What is less clear is what constitutes the correct form of child restraint. Appropriate child restraints include baby carriers, child seats, harnesses and booster seats. Clearly, however, not all forms of restraint are equally suitable for all children. All approved child restraints must carry the BS "Kitemark" or United Nations "E" mark and should be labelled by manufacturers to indicate the weight for which the seat or device has been designed. This in itself may deter some parents from continuing to use rear-facing seats.
So, if you or any friends or colleagues have young children, encourage them not to move too swiftly into forward-facing carseats.
For more information on the use of child seats visit www.childcarseats.org.uk, and for legal advice about any motoring issues contact us at www.keepmedriving.com.