Safety
Today I did a marathon session of safety seminars and car seat installations to keep my CPST license current. I just barely passed all my installations--I hadn't done a booster seat since my class in November. The seminars were easier, but a bit tedious and occasionally scary. If I ever see one more crash-test video...I came home and told Aaron I want side air bags. Now.
The first seminar was on motor vehicle crashes during pregnancy. It mainly consisted of a lot of accident statistics, and boiled down to: wear your seat belt, yes, even if you're pregnant. Especially if you're pregnant. Wear the lap belt low under your belly.
The next one was on vehicular safety for special needs kids--car beds for preemies, extra large seats for older kids who need head support, and wheelchair securement in school buses. Interesting, but not something I expect to have to deal with much. Out of context quote from this talk: "I've probably tied down about 5,000 people."
After lunch, we got automobile safety features, where I learned about new cars with "occupant classification systems," smart seats that can tell how heavy you are, and lock your seatbelt and/or deploy airbags accordingly in an accident. The seats have computers in them calculating the delta vee for individual passengers. Science fiction! This was the presentation with all the crash test videos that convinced me I want side air bags. You want them too. Yes, you do. Interesting factoid: seatbelt lock and airbag deployment are measured in milliseconds. It takes less than one second for all of this to happen.
Air bag tips: Tilt steering column so air bag is aimed at chest height, not head. The distance between you and the airbag should match the length of your forearm, elbow to wrist. Also, that "10 and 2" hand position on the steering wheel is old hat. They now recommend 9 and 3 or 8 and 4 to avoid the airbag if it deploys.
Then we got new improvements in child restraint technology, including a nifty forward facing seat with rigid LATCH attachments and its very own ALR in the LATCH belt. That makes no sense to you, but I hate using LATCH because I find it hard to tighten the belt enough. With a built-in ALR (the thing that makes your seat belt go clickety-clickety when you pull it all the way out and release it), that problem goes away.
Sidenote: speaking of LATCH, I was shocked to discover that it's not crash tested! Child restraints installed using seat belts are crash tested, but LATCH is tested using a "pull test," where weight equivalent to low-speed crash forces is applied to the safety seat. They say this is an equivalent test, but it really bugs me. So I will continue to install using seat belts, regardless of whether a car has LATCH.
There was also a seat with a ratchety thing for adjusting the harness straps, without having to re-thread them through different slots. The biggest change, though, was that new seats are starting to be made with higher rear-facing weight allowances, letting you keep your child rear-facing past two years old. Basically, we'd all be safer rear-facing, even the driver :) so the longer the better.
We wrapped up with a talk on safety seat recalls, and why it's important to register your child safety seat. (Answer: because that's how you get recall notifications.) It's important. Go do it. I'll wait. If you've lost the card, there are forms at safercar.gov.
And since we're on the subject of car seats...last weekend I was at a church rummage sale, and what did I see but some used car seats for sale. We all know it's bad to buy a car seat whose history you don't know, right? (We did know that, right?) Not only did these people have used car seats out, they were *crappy* used car seats. One was the cheap 3-point harness kind they give out free at hospitals to welfare recipients (because who cares about poor people's kids, right?), but the best (worst) was the one that didn't actually have any restraints on it. It was just the plastic shell with the foam padding--no cover, no straps, no buckle. In other words, a planter. Even better (worse), the plastic was clearly stressed and on the verge of cracking. This seat had been in an accident, and someone had done their level best to make it unusable, and *despite* that, it was sitting out for sale on the church's front lawn.
Yes, I said something. I explained as politely as I could that this thing belonged in a land fill, before someone bought it and tried tying their kid into it with shoelaces or some damn thing.
The first seminar was on motor vehicle crashes during pregnancy. It mainly consisted of a lot of accident statistics, and boiled down to: wear your seat belt, yes, even if you're pregnant. Especially if you're pregnant. Wear the lap belt low under your belly.
The next one was on vehicular safety for special needs kids--car beds for preemies, extra large seats for older kids who need head support, and wheelchair securement in school buses. Interesting, but not something I expect to have to deal with much. Out of context quote from this talk: "I've probably tied down about 5,000 people."
After lunch, we got automobile safety features, where I learned about new cars with "occupant classification systems," smart seats that can tell how heavy you are, and lock your seatbelt and/or deploy airbags accordingly in an accident. The seats have computers in them calculating the delta vee for individual passengers. Science fiction! This was the presentation with all the crash test videos that convinced me I want side air bags. You want them too. Yes, you do. Interesting factoid: seatbelt lock and airbag deployment are measured in milliseconds. It takes less than one second for all of this to happen.
Air bag tips: Tilt steering column so air bag is aimed at chest height, not head. The distance between you and the airbag should match the length of your forearm, elbow to wrist. Also, that "10 and 2" hand position on the steering wheel is old hat. They now recommend 9 and 3 or 8 and 4 to avoid the airbag if it deploys.
Then we got new improvements in child restraint technology, including a nifty forward facing seat with rigid LATCH attachments and its very own ALR in the LATCH belt. That makes no sense to you, but I hate using LATCH because I find it hard to tighten the belt enough. With a built-in ALR (the thing that makes your seat belt go clickety-clickety when you pull it all the way out and release it), that problem goes away.
Sidenote: speaking of LATCH, I was shocked to discover that it's not crash tested! Child restraints installed using seat belts are crash tested, but LATCH is tested using a "pull test," where weight equivalent to low-speed crash forces is applied to the safety seat. They say this is an equivalent test, but it really bugs me. So I will continue to install using seat belts, regardless of whether a car has LATCH.
There was also a seat with a ratchety thing for adjusting the harness straps, without having to re-thread them through different slots. The biggest change, though, was that new seats are starting to be made with higher rear-facing weight allowances, letting you keep your child rear-facing past two years old. Basically, we'd all be safer rear-facing, even the driver :) so the longer the better.
We wrapped up with a talk on safety seat recalls, and why it's important to register your child safety seat. (Answer: because that's how you get recall notifications.) It's important. Go do it. I'll wait. If you've lost the card, there are forms at safercar.gov.
And since we're on the subject of car seats...last weekend I was at a church rummage sale, and what did I see but some used car seats for sale. We all know it's bad to buy a car seat whose history you don't know, right? (We did know that, right?) Not only did these people have used car seats out, they were *crappy* used car seats. One was the cheap 3-point harness kind they give out free at hospitals to welfare recipients (because who cares about poor people's kids, right?), but the best (worst) was the one that didn't actually have any restraints on it. It was just the plastic shell with the foam padding--no cover, no straps, no buckle. In other words, a planter. Even better (worse), the plastic was clearly stressed and on the verge of cracking. This seat had been in an accident, and someone had done their level best to make it unusable, and *despite* that, it was sitting out for sale on the church's front lawn.
Yes, I said something. I explained as politely as I could that this thing belonged in a land fill, before someone bought it and tried tying their kid into it with shoelaces or some damn thing.