wear ur seat belts pls.....

ST Dec 4 2004

6 myths that could kill your children
Did you know that crashing at just 30kmh is as bad as falling off an overhead bridge?

LEOW JU-LEN learns some hard truths from two safety experts

IF WE would all wear belts, so many lives would be saved, says John-Fredrik Gronvall. As a senior safety research engineer with Volvo Car Corporation, he should know.

Mr Gronvall and Ms Anna Claesson, an accident researcher from Volvo, were in town recently to raise awareness of how proper seatbelt usage can make a real difference to safety, particularly for children travelling in cars.

His main message was simple: If you love your children, belt them up. And not merely because the law requires you to do so, but because it makes a very real difference to their survival chances in a crash.

'All this is about awareness, and not just about fines.'

1 Fatal crashes are rare in Singapore

Fact: Last year, 211 people were killed on Singapore roads - 27 of those casualties were riding in a car. 'That's pretty good for a population of your size,' says Mr Gronvall. Indeed, it sounds that a person's chances of dying in a car are relatively slim here.

However, when told that Singapore has roughly 405,000 passenger cars, Mr Gronvall quickly readjusts his assessment. 'In that case, it's a little high,' he says.

In fact, Singapore's casualty rate, while much better than those in most parts of Asia, still lags behind that of some developed countries. Great Britain has 70 times as many cars as Singapore, for example, but only 16 times as many road deaths.

Rather worryingly, the 27 people killed in cars last year also represent an increase of 28.6 per cent over 2002.


2 Speeds in Singapore are too low to cause serious injury

Fact: It doesn't take serious speed to cause serious injury. Try this on for size: Climb onto an ordinary dining chair, then fall forward onto your face. Be sure to have a tissue handy to wipe the blood from your nose. Congratulations! You've just simulated a crash at only 15kmh.

It gets increasingly violent as you increase the speed.

Crashing at just 30kmh is as bad as falling off an overhead bridge, for example. '30kmh is nothing,' says Mr Gronvall, adding that seatbelt usage is of paramount importance because drivers easily exceed the low speeds cited in our examples, even in Singapore.


3 Parents can hold on to their children during a collision

Fact: The law says that children up to eight must be in a child seat. Many people flout this, but it's impossible to flout the laws of physics. These dictate that a child weighing, say, 30kg and travelling at 40kmh would carry as much as one tonne of energy in a frontal collision.

Parents may be able to perform superhuman feats of time management and power cleaning, but holding on to a tonne isn't possible for anyone. Only seatbelts are able to restrain a child's body properly.

'Here, you often see the family's maid holding the baby,' says Mr Gronvall. 'In a crash, the maid kills the baby, or the baby kills someone.' In fact, an unbelted child is doubly dangerous because during a crash, an unrestrained body is a potentially fatal hazard.

According to Volvo, if a child's body hit your back with one tonne of force, all your ribs would break, they would puncture your lungs, and you would be gone in 60 seconds.


4 Size is everything - if my child is big enough, he doesn't need a booster seat

Fact: Children need special seats not merely because of their size, but also their bone structure. Seatbelts are designed for adults and if they're not used together with booster seat or child seat, they can cause injuries in a crash.

Adult hips, for example, are shaped differently from those of children, and this can cause a lap belt to slip over a child's abdomen during a crash, causing internal organ damage.

As for smaller children travelling without booster seats, the lap belt often sits directly over their tummies, with the torso belt at their chins - both dangerous positions.

Despite what the law says, Volvo recommends that children use a booster seat up to age 10 because that's when their bones are properly formed. It's also imperative for children to sit in their boosters in a seat with no airbag facing it.

Parents normally do the opposite and allow their kids to stop using the seats too early, but in this respect, it pays to be kiasu.


5 Rearward-facing seats are unnecessary, and give kids motion sickness

Fact: Travelling backwards is actually safer, according to Volvo, and if car design made it possible, the company would prefer that adults sat facing rearwards, too.

Small children in particular should travel in a rearward-facing child seat. Ms Claesson says that during a frontal collision, a forward-facing child would suffer a broken neck easily. That's because children are proportioned differently.

A newborn's head makes up half its bodyweight, for example. Coupled with the fact that its spine has yet to be properly formed, the forces pulling its head forward in a frontal collision would snap its neck.

'This makes it important that the child is using rearward restraints up to the age of three or four,' says Ms Claesson.

Many parents abandon their rearward facing seats long before that, worrying that travelling backwards would disorientate their children. But Ms Claesson says children are less likely to suffer from disorientation than adults, who are much more used to travelling forward.

Rearward-facing seats, she says, should actually be used 'as long as possible'. Volvo's field researchers have collected data from 30,000 accidents since the 1970s, and among all the cases where an infant was in a rearward-facing seat, only one fatality was recorded. Even that was caused by drowning, because the car involved plunged into a river.

One thing to note, however: Rearward-facing seats should never be used in a seat with an active airbag in front of it.


6 Seatbelts are a danger to unborn children

Fact: The opposite is true - lack of seatbelt use causes the death of unborn children in car crashes. In fact, studies from the United States show that car crashes are the leading cause of death for unborn children.

According to Ms Claesson, some pregnant women believe that seatbelts will do more harm than good in a frontal collision, a misconception that has resulted in needless casualties.

Worn properly, the belt would restrain the mother in a crash and pose no threat to the foetus.

The mother should avoid wearing bulky clothing and place the torso belt between her breasts and to the side of the pregnant belly, with the lap belt laying flat and as low as possible under the curve of the belly.

After clicking the belt into the buckle, the mother should then give the torso belt an upward tug to remove slack from the belt system. It's also advisable to sit as far as possible from the steering wheel, while still being able to control it properly.

For more information on child safety, pick up a free copy of A Safety Manual: Children In Cars from SM Motors' Volvo showroom at 249 Alexandra Road or visit www.volvochildsafety.com