Why It Is Unsafe For A Child To Sit In The Front

Posted by novusautoglass on December 10th, 2019

Cars are a convenient mode of travel for just about anyone. For families, they prove to be the ideal vehicles. You can take your kids to school with you and go out on road trips with the whole family in a car. However, despite being very safe, cars do pose a potential threat to young children. Car accidents are commonplace and might endanger their lives. Even a small crash can be fatal to a child if it is not adequately protected. Car safety recommendations stress that kids shouldn’t be allowed to sit in the front. They should be seated at the back and must be properly secured before hitting the road. Let’s investigate why it is unsafe for a child to sit in the car’s front seat.

Their Bodies Aren’t Fully Developed

Children are small and don’t have fully developed bodies. For them, the front seat of the car is just too big. You can’t properly secure them in this seat as well. Even if a child looks like an adult and has a good height for his age, the bones in his body are still in their developmental stage. Thus, they can’t withstand the pressures that are applied to the skeleton during a car crash. Moreover, the safety features within a car won’t be able to properly protect them in such an event either if they are seated at the front. The seatbelt of the front seat and the airbags are both designed for adults not for kids. Both of them apply such force on the body that is too much to handle for a kid.

Seatbelts at the Front Seat Don’t Fit the Child

The front seat of the car is designed for adults so all of its safety features are designed for them and don’t fit a child. The seatbelt fitted in the front seat of the car has two straps. One secures your hipbone while the other secures the breastbone. During a crash, the seatbelt keeps the body from vaulting forward and makes sure that you remain in the seat and come to a halt slowly. The seatbelt does this by applying pressure on the hip and the breastbone via its two straps. Now, for an adult body, this pressure is easily bearable. However, it can be too much for a child and might result in a fracture.

Airbags Can Cause Injury

Most cars nowadays have airbags. These airbags deploy instantly when a car crash occurs. The purpose of these airbags is to ensure that the person sitting in the front seat isn’t ejected out of the car. They push the person back into the seat and keep them there until their body stops moving. Similar to the seatbelts, the airbags are designed for adults and not kids. A child can get severely injured or might even die because of the high impact caused by the deployment of the airbag.

This is why despite 7 years being the legal age for a child to travel in the front seat, children under the age of 13 shouldn’t sit there when travelling. The bodies of children in their teens have developed well enough that they can withstand the forces applied by the different safety features installed in cars.

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