Feature Story

September 7, 2008

Child safety seats and lap-and-shoulder belts effective in preventing serious injury

From EurekAlert! - Breaking News:
Chicago, IL -- September 4, 2008 -- For young children, all states currently require the use of child safety seats, and the minimum age and weight requirements to graduate to seat belts has been increasing over time.

A new study in the journal Economic Inquiry reveals that lap-and-shoulder seat belts perform as well as child safety seats in preventing serious injury.

Steven D. Levitt of theUniversity of Chicago and author of the book Freakonomics and Joseph J. Doyle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology analyzed three large representative samples of crashes reported to the police, as well as linked hospital data, among motor vehicle passengers aged 2-6 years of age.

Researchers used the data to compare seat belts and child safety seats in preventing injury.

Lap belts are somewhat less effective than the other two types of restraints, but far superior to riding unrestrained.

"Our comparisons across restraint types incorporate the way they are used, or misused, in practice," the authors conclude.

"Because many child safety seats are, in actual use, improperly installed, our estimates are likely to understate the benefits associated with their proper use.

Besides containing research on all economics topic areas, a principal objective is to make each article understandable to economists who are not necessarily specialists in the article's topic area.

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