Prospectives for and Problems Related to Protection of Children in Child Restraints

A short review of the development of performance requirements for child restraint systems and a summary of the present situation as revealed at the recent SAE Child Injury and Restraint Conference are given in this paper. It has taken a long time to arrive at dynamic performance standards in North America as well as in Europe. The present rate of child restraint usage is encouraging and yet not sufficiently high, although more children than ever are now protected by good systems. The reported high rate of misuse of restraint systems indicates that there is need for further improvements. Efforts in this direction should take into account the standard performance requirements, the specification of child dummies, problems of convenience and the design of vehicles. A close cooperation between North America and Europe in this respect would be mutually beneficial.