05/08/2023
Why do we need car seats?
Surely, every driver-parent asks himself this question. Maybe it's just marketing and someone is trying to make money on it. Not without that, of course, for everything in the world, you have to pay. But still, the simplest answer is: child car seats are designed for the convenience and safety of transporting babies in vehicles. But what exactly do these words mean, we'll try to explain to you.
Convenience is quite simple:
- The child is not sitting/lying in anyone's arms, respectively do not need an additional passenger who will hold the child. For example, if my mom is driving, she can handle herself if she needs to go to the store or doctor's office, or visit her friend));
- The baby can comfortably sleep in the car seat without taking up the whole sofa as if he were sleeping in the back seat without a seat. The baby is not crowded and does not interfere with other passengers;
- The child is buckled up and sitting in one place, not moving around the car and trying to push or pull something. This is especially important if there are only two of you in the car: the child and the driver. Because the driver needs to keep his eyes on the road, not so that the little passenger doesn't accidentally fall out the window. Everyone's safety depends on it.
As for safety, we can't figure it out without the help of the exact sciences. After all, according to the laws of physics, the weight of the moving body at a sudden stop increases tenfold, due to the negative acceleration. For more clarity, let's look at the numbers. In a frontal collision at the speed of 10 km per hour, a child weighing 5 kg at the moment of the collision would weigh 70 kg. You should agree that not every mother is able to hold much weight. Add the effect of surprise and the task becomes almost impossible. This is at a speed of 10 km per hour, and if the speed of 40 km, the weight increases by 35 times! Not a single mother or even a well-trained father can hold 175 kg in his hands at the moment of surprise. The specialists of the Volvo factory have calculated that a frontal impact at 25 km per hour is as if you stood with your feet on a stool and fell face down. As the speed increases, the number of "stools" (the impact force increases) grows exponentially. That is, at a speed of 40 km per hour you need nine stools, one on top of the other vertically. Imagine the feelings of a passenger, who has fallen from such a mountain of stools flat. What to speak about a newborn baby, whose muscles and joints haven't yet had time to develop and get stronger? And now remember how often you have to brake sharply, being on the road: the dog ran out on the road, a careless pedestrian seeks to run across the road in the wrong place, the car ahead has braked sharply... But it is also an emergency stop, and it has almost the same consequences for passengers, as the impact.
In addition, many car seats have side protection, that is, they minimize the consequences of a side impact for the baby.
It's up to you to decide if you need a car seat. Remember that the safety of your child in the car directly depends on it.
