0:13 - This is a very important and hot topic
0:23 - Child Seats - from infant to elementary age
0:59 - The magic number for keeping your child in a booster seat
1:38 - Watch out for airbags and car doors
2:09 - NEVER leave your child unattended in a vehicle
Hi folks. My name is Harper Jones with Bow-Tiger and you're watching Saturdays with Harper.
Now, today we are going to discuss car safety for our children. This is a very important and hot topic, as it is coming closer to summer, as well. So, I wanted to go over a few key points to keep your child safe while riding in your vehicle. The first one is from infant to elementary age, there are specific child restraints, child seats that are designed with your child's safety in mind. The infant seat, which is a rear facing seat does have sort of that bucket design. And, it is designed to keep that small little body nice and cozy within that seat. From there you go to more of a baby seat that can be forward facing, that can turn into a toddler's seat, as well. Then, you do also have the booster seat with back and then the booster seat with the back that can be removed for your older child.
Now, we do want to make sure that our children are kept in rear facing seats, up until the age two. It did used to be one, as a guideline. And, now it is aged two, 24 months. So, let's definitely try to do that to keep our kids safe. After that, do remember that four foot, nine is the magic number for keeping your child in a booster seat. They don't want to be using just a standard seat belt until they reach that magic number. Also, make sure that your child is never in front of an airbag. We don't want a child in a forward or rear facing seat in front of that airbag, as it can be extremely detrimental to them if they were to be in an accident and that airbag actually exploded.
Another big thing is be careful of your car doors. Sometimes we don't realize how heavy those car doors are or we put too much confidence into them staying open. If you are even at a slight slant with your vehicle, if you have parked on a slant at all or on a small hill, that car door may not stay open as your child is trying to get out. So, definitely, help your child out of the car. Don't expect them to just do it themselves. And, make sure you keep that car door open for them and close it, so that we can avoid any injuries, body, hand, anything else.
The other hot topic and I cannot stress this enough is do not leave your child in the car. If you get out of the car, out of the vehicle, even with leaving the car on, it's not honestly a recommended situation. You want to make sure you remove your child from the vehicle as well. You always want to make sure that you check the back seats just to make sure. You know, heaven forbid that that did happen. But, you do want to make sure that no pet nor child is left in the back of your car. With it becoming summertime and it getting super hot, this is an even bigger topic. It is really, a hot topic. People don't typically realize the amount of time it takes for your car to heat up. On a beautiful day, say 75 degrees, nice and sunny, in ten minutes, the interior of your car, once your car has been turned off, is now at a 100 degrees. In 30 minutes, the interior of your car, at 75 degrees outside, the inside of your car is now 120. We don't want to put our children in that situation. It can be fatal to your child to be left in the vehicle. So, always make sure that you remove the child. And, as I said, any pets from the vehicle if you are getting out of the car.
This is also good in regards to safety for even the abduction of children. We don't want to leave our child alone in the vehicle where somebody else has access to them. So, make sure that you keep your children in a age appropriate car seat. Do watch out for airbags and car doors as they can definitely cause injury to children. And, then also we want to make sure that you never leave your child unattended in a vehicle, both for temperature reasons and also reasons of their own safety. And, I want to thank you guys for watching Saturdays with Harper and tune in next week. Thanks.
