Are you kidding?! Is this a child safety seat?

Review expert: Zhu Guangsi, member of Beijing Science Writers Association

The weather is clear and crisp in autumn, which is a good time to travel. I believe some parents who are planning to take their children on a self-driving trip may be scratching their heads: arranging a child safety seat is really a big project...

In order to ensure that their babies can sleep peacefully in the car, many parents try their best to "fight" with child safety seats, so much so that even after installing the safety seats, even their mood for driving out is reduced.

Source: pixabay

According to a survey, the most common problems parents report when using child safety seats are: inconvenient installation and use, insufficient space in the car, too heavy to move, seats have odors, and children don't like them.

In addition, regular checks need to be carried out according to the instruction manual, such as whether the connection is correct, whether the seat belt is twisted, etc. It seems that this job really requires hands-on ability above the intermediate level, which clearly belongs to the field of engineering and is not very friendly to people with a liberal arts background.

In fact, we should be thankful, because the most common child safety seats today are the result of decades of evolution. While ensuring safety, they are also easy to use.

If you saw those strange early models, you would exclaim: They are so... simple! Oh, no, they seem to be quite perfunctory...

A brief history of the development of child safety seats

my country's relevant mandatory standards explain child safety seats as: a type of child restraint system, which is a child seat with a child restraint belt.

Interestingly, looking back at history, the world's earliest child restraint systems were not much different from what this concept describes - it just saved a chair.

In 1898, a safety belt that could fasten a child to a car seat was invented. The specific style can be seen in the later improved version of the multi-purpose safety belt below. It does have many uses, except for one: preventing the child from rolling around in the seat as the car moves.

The official uses include but are not limited to: preventing children from disturbing the driver while driving, giving children plenty of room to move around, being able to grab children when the car brakes suddenly, and even being able to hold the rope in your hand when you get out of the car and take your child for a walk...

Source: Internet pictures

In the 1930s , as the economy recovered and the demand for travel increased, child car seats began to appear, mainly made of metal frames and canvas, which could be hung on seats and doors. Some luxury seats were also equipped with plastic armrests, small toys and seat belts.

When I saw the child in the photo with his feet kicking in the air and struggling hard, and the little girl laughing next to him, I suddenly felt that even the deluxe version of the chair was not so attractive.

Source: Internet pictures

Ten years later, the theme of child seats is to let children sit higher so that parents can take care of them with their peripheral vision. Of course, the appearances are even more bizarre. Some are more and more like chairs, and even have small dining tables added; some are more and more like amusement facilities, and a seat board can solve the problem; and some... How to say it, it makes people believe that children are sometimes very similar to cute kittens, especially when they stick their heads out of boxes or baskets...

The protagonists of these advertising photos are all children with bright smiles and mothers driving. It is conceivable that the advertisements are aimed at the emerging group of drivers in society - female drivers.

Source: Internet pictures

Of course, there are ads targeting dads, but for some reason, the style seems a little creepy.

Source: Internet pictures

In the 1960s, with the invention and popularization of three-point safety belts, driving safety received unprecedented attention. In 1963-1964 , the world's first rear-facing child safety seat was born in Volvo. In 1968 , Ford launched the modern child safety seat.

The inspiration for rear-facing safety seats is quite high-end - the seats that astronauts use during spacecraft launch.

Source: Internet pictures

This toilet-looking seat with anti-collision cushioning finally puts child safety in the first place—and sacrifices aesthetics to a degree that is visible to the naked eye.

Source: Internet pictures

Child safety seats after the 1970s clearly hit the right note in terms of technology. They not only applied five-point protection, but also allowed children's limbs to move more flexibly. People began to realize that a seat belt was not enough to ensure the safety of children, and that it was equally important to fix and protect the legs, head, and sides of the body.

Some child safety seats can even be transformed into child strollers in seconds! Look at the cost-effectiveness.

Source: Internet pictures

I want to say one more thing. Some seemingly comfortable solutions still have a market today, such as lying flat.

Source: Internet pictures

However, whether it is lying down or lying sideways in the back seat, you can buy it from ancient times to the present. But there is only one condition for the safety of these things: the car is stopped and do not move.

In fact, such products cannot provide any safety protection in an emergency. To understand this problem, you can also find out why the world spends so much effort on developing child safety seats. Is it unsafe to use the existing seat belts in the car or simply be held tightly by parents?

Why is it unsafe not to use a child safety seat?

Car seats, seat belts, and airbags are designed for adults, the main group of car users . The relevant parameters and standards are basically formulated based on drivers and passengers who are 140cm tall and weigh more than 36kg. For children, the seat belts that should have restrained their shoulders are across their necks, and the airbags that should have supported their chests will hit their foreheads. What's more, very small children have a certain chance of flying out of the gap in the seat belts.

What is even more worrying is that even if these safety devices really work, it may not be all good for children. This is because children's bones are weaker, their center of gravity is higher, and their heads are heavier. In short, their structure and strength are quite different from those of adults. The inertia and resistance that adults can easily withstand may not be able to be withstood by children even if they exert their utmost strength, which can cause serious injuries such as fractures and internal organ damage.

Child safety seat source: Wikipedia

In short, relying solely on the safety devices in the car cannot guarantee the safety of children.

So, what if you hold the child in your own hands?

First, you can't hold it. Experiments show that if a collision occurs at a speed of 50 km/h, to hold a 10kg child, you need to have the strength to hold a 250kg moving object. 250kg... just imagine, how many of your own weight is equivalent to that? Another test showed that even if adults knew in advance that a collision was going to happen, the child dummy they were holding still slipped out of their hands, and the speed of the car this time was only 20 km/h.

Secondly, hugging the child will also cause secondary injuries. Simply put, the child will become a "human cushion" between the adult and the front seat or front windshield, which is scary to think about.

According to data from the Ministry of Public Security, among children aged 1-14 who died in traffic accidents from 2012 to 2021, children aged 1-6 accounted for nearly 60%. Child passenger deaths accounted for an average of 43.9% of child traffic injury deaths. Among child passenger deaths, those riding in motor vehicles accounted for 30.7% of the total number of injuries and deaths, which is 2.3 times that of those riding in non-motor vehicles.

Rear-facing child safety seat Source: Wikipedia/Pieter Kuiper

It can be seen that unprofessional safety protection is equal to unsafe. So, how does the child safety seat perform?

Statistics from the World Health Organization show that if a child safety seat is used correctly in a traffic accident, the possibility of a child suffering fatal injuries will be greatly reduced : the possibility of fatal injuries to infants under one year old will be reduced by 71%, the possibility of fatal injuries to children aged 1-4 years old will be reduced by 54%, and the possibility of fatal injuries to children aged 4-7 years old will be reduced by 59%. Other statistics show that if a child safety seat is not installed in the car, the child traffic accident death rate is 8 times that of a child with a safety seat installed, and the injury rate is 3 times that of the latter. In short, the best way to protect children's safety in the car market is to use a child safety seat correctly.

Source: "Analysis of the Development Status and Standards and Regulations of Child Safety Seats in my country"

Nowadays, child safety seats have been popular in developed countries such as Europe and the United States for decades. According to statistics, the usage rate is over 90%. However, after this new thing entered my country at the end of the 20th century, it faced the embarrassing situation of being well received but not popular.

Source: Wikipedia

Did you know that my country is the world's largest production base for child safety seats, producing more than 15 million child safety seats each year, of which more than 90% are exported abroad, accounting for 60% of the world market share.

However, authoritative surveys show that the installation and use rate of child safety seats in my country was only a pitiful 10% in 2015. Even in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, the three most developed cities in my country with a high car penetration rate, the rate of family safety seats for children aged 4-6 was only 75% in 2021, but only 53% of them were "always used".

Fortunately, the quality of products sold domestically has been continuously improving, and relevant safety education has been continuously strengthened, especially national and local legislation has been advancing.

At first, Chengdu, Guangdong, Henan and other places prohibited children from sitting in the front passenger seat of motor vehicles; later, Sichuan proposed "using special seats according to regulations"; finally in 2013, Suzhou City issued regulations requiring "the use of child safety seats that meet national standards", officially incorporating "child safety seats" into road traffic safety legislation for the first time in my country.

As of now, many provinces and cities including Fujian, Shanghai, and Shenzhen have issued relevant regulations and taken punitive measures against not using child safety seats.

The newly revised "Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Minors" in June 2021 included child safety seats in national legislation for the first time. The public security traffic management department also stated that the content on the use of child safety seats will also be given priority consideration when revising the Road Traffic Safety Law in the future.

Grandpa Yuan Longping once said that he had a dream of "enjoying the coolness under the rice plants". Later, his dream came true. Perhaps we can have another dream, looking forward to the day when those terrifying laboratory video scenes will only appear in the laboratory, not in real life.