Keeping safe in the car in winter

Our children’s safety is our top priority in life. We at Axkid contribute with safe rear-facing car seats, but to keep your child as safe as possible it is important that you as an adult, ensures that the seat is installed correctly and also makes sure your child sits properly and as safe as possible in the car seat.

Did you know that winter coats/jackets/snowsuits (outerware) and car seats are a bad match? Clothes designed for outside do not belong in the car seat. Coats, overalls and jackets create a distance to the belt which means the belt does not come as close to the child’s body as it is supposed to be. Therefore, the outerwear causes a worse belt tightening on the child and in the event of a collision it leads to a greater risk of injury and collision forces on the child. Or even worse, with a looser belt tightening due to the outerwear, the risk of your child slipping out of the harness is even bigger.

But I don´t want my child to freeze when we drive? Well, instead of having their outerwear on, some other options can keep your child warm during the ride:

• Use a regular blanket that you place on your child on the outside of the belt and the car seat.
• Dress the child in a fleece top. It will keep them warm without creating air between clothes and belts.
• Use a footmuff that is designed to be used in a car seat and that allows a harness to be thread through. You then fasten the child in the footmuff and then close it so that it is on the outside of the harness. Important though is that the footmuff should not make it more complicated to take your child out of the car seat in case of an emergency.
• An extra tip from one of our team is pop a hot water bottle into the seat prior to putting your child in to warm the seat up.

Unfortunately, many parents are careless about the outerwear in the car seat and think it is just too complicated and a hassle to do every time. The argument that you should not travel a long distance and that you do not have to care about the outerwear is not a good argument either. An accident can appear at any time and even at low speeds, the impact force can increase with outerwear, which is an unnecessary risk for your child’s safety.

Drive safely during the winter, avoid thick outerwear and put them on when you have arrived safely.

ArriveSafe
Axkid

Top information from Axkid. You can read the original article here.