How Can You Protect Your Children Against Whiplash?
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How Can You Protect Your Children Against Whiplash?
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The Office for National Statistics has released figures that show that approximately 30% of all road traffic accidents involve children under the age of 10, seated in the back of the car. While manufacturers are stepping up their attempts to reduce the potential for child whiplash, there are precautions that motorists themselves can take.
While whiplash is often considered to be an injury associated with adults, research by the Spine Research Institute of San Diego suggests that children are more susceptible to whiplash because of their in-car habits and their physiology. Children are inclined to fall asleep in a car, allowing their heads to drop forward and even slump under the restraint itself. In the event of a rear-impact collision, either of these positions can increase the likelihood of sustaining a whiplash injury.
What happens to a child in an impact
During a rear-impact collision, the head follows the motion of the vehicle before being flung back in the opposite direction, mimicking the action of a whip which leads to children’s whiplash. This action extends the vertebrae beyond their normal range of motion and often at unnatural speeds. During this motion, the soft tissues surrounding the neck, shoulders and spine can be stretched, torn and bruised. Because a child’s head is proportionally larger to its body than that of an adult, they are more vulnerable to the possibility of a whiplash injury. A child weighing around 27 kilograms and travelling unbelted at a speed of 30 mph can achieve a potential mass of around 1200 kilograms in the event of a sudden impact. Most of a child’s weight is made up of its head and this plays a significant part in the forward momentum that is the initial part of the whipping motion.
Safety factors
In choosing seating for a child, there are a number of factors to take into consideration. If the child is a newborn it should have a rear-facing seat, even if it is in the back of the car. This prevents the head being thrown forward and stretching the spine beyond its normal capacity. For children who are able to sit upright, a five-point harness has been found to be the safest type of restraint. These harnesses evenly distribute the forces of impact and reduce the potential for the head to follow the motion of the vehicle in the event of an accident.
New developments
Renault has developed a head restraint for those children who are too old for enclosed seats but are not yet adults. Their research has found that the disproportionate size of a child’s head puts a strain on the neck during impact that is equivalent to a Formula 1 driver wearing a helmet. The head restraint offers additional support to the head and neck to reduce the whipping motion of the spine and also has two supporting arms that sit either side of the child’s head to offer support in the event that they fall asleep. This ‘sleep safe’ model is now widely available to most cars.
Numerous lives are saved each year through the proper use of seatbelts. More children could be spared the pain of whiplash if parents research the anti-whiplash precautions available to them.
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