Child & Tween Car Seat Belt Safety #KidsBuckleUp

My children are the most important thing in my life. Seat belt safety has ALWAYS been and will ALWAYS BE one of the most important focuses my husband and I have. My children are just too precious to me for them NOT to be kept as safe as I can possibly keep them!

Every 33 seconds a child under 13 is involved in a car crash in the United States. For younger children, car seats can dramatically reduce the risk of fatality or injury – but over half of car seats are either installed or used incorrectly. For older children, buckling up is critical. A full 50% of children age 8-14 who were killed in car crashes from 2011-2015 were not restrained.

That’s why we want parents and caregivers to know about the importance of making sure their child is safely restrained—whether that’s selecting the right car seat for their child’s age and size, or making sure that older kids (8-14) always buckle their seat belts and sit in the backseat.

As parents, we all want to do the right thing to keep our children safe and sound. This spring, the Ad Council and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) are unveiling new PSAs to address these important issues. First, is the up to date car seat safety information like the tips found in the fun new video series “The Wide World of Car Seats.”

I take great pride in making sure I make the best parenting decisions for my child. Picking the car seat that works best for my child’s size, safety and needs is far more important to me than even the looks of the car seat itself.

The right car seat can make all the difference in a motor vehicle crash. And car crashes are a leading cause of death for children 1 to 13 years old. But despite their best intentions, many parents may not realize their child isn’t in the right seat. For example, many parents move their children to the next restraint type (car seat, booster seat, seat belt) too soon. To make sure you have the right seat for your child, visit SaferCar.gov.

And just when you think you’ve got this parenting thing down, your child becomes a “tween” and you enter a whole new world. To help with travel safety, the Ad Council and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) are unveiling new PSAs featuring characters from Fox’s upcoming summer road trip adventure Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul. The PSAs remind parents and caregivers that even if kids argue and plead, parents should stand firm and always insist that their kids buckle up and sit in the back seat (the safest place for kids under the age of 13).

My boys are BIG fans of The Diary of the Wimpy Kid. Since they love it, it makes it even easier to explain seat belt safety to them by letting them see that their favorite characters find it just as important as we do!

Since my children first came home from the hospital, I have always been big on making sure they were buckled up properly. It is NOT a rare occurrence for them to hear the words, “everyone buckled?” before we leave to go anywhere.

They also know that if there were to be a problem that they needed to unbuckle, they have to ask so we can stop the car. Just this morning we had a talk about why we wear seatbelts since some of their friends do not. My children knew the answers and even agreed with me that it was important to have their seatbelts on at ALL TIMES! 

Per data from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), an estimated 69,000 tweens are injured every year in car crashes and 61% of 14-year-old children killed in 2015 car crashes were unrestrained at the time of the crash. Even though life as a parent is full of compromises, seat belt safety should never be up for negotiation. That’s why the new PSAs encourage us to: “Never give up until they buckle up!”

For more information or if you need more tips to convince your tween to buckle up, visit SaferCar.gov/KidsBuckleUp. If you have a great tip, join the conversion on social media using: #KidsBuckleUp.