I have two children. My son Reese is 2 ½ and my one year old daughter Kylie. My husband, Rich and I only had two car seats between us which were in my car because at the time I didn’t work and my car was used as the family car. After starting a new job opposite to my husbands shift, we had to trade the two car seats every day. Rich would take the children to our baby sitters and leave the two car seats for me when I would go to pick them up. After work I would put the car seats back in my car and take my children home. We only live five blocks from the babysitter, so when I put the seats in the car, I wouldn’t strap them in because we only lived a short distance away and I was trying to save time because I would have to pull the seats out again when we got home.

One day, I took my son out shopping during the holiday rush. Upon leaving the parking lot and entering a busy street, I got in the turning lane. I was too busy paying attention to traffic to notice my son playing with the locks and door handles in the back seat. When I turned the corner of the busy intersection, his door flew open and his seat tipped to the side, then caught on the seat belt.

My heart leapt into my throat as it took me a moment to realize I had strapped his car seat in before we left home. As I pulled into the first parking lot off the intersection to stop the car and get out to check on my son, all I could think about was what would have happened if I didn’t strap his seat in as I failed to do so many times. If the fall didn’t kill him, the car behind me would have.

Now my children’s car seats are always securely strapped in. No matter how short the drive is or how much time can be saved, a child’s life is never worth the risk. I will never make that mistake again and I consider myself fortunate that my mistake didn’t cost the life of my son.

Every day an average of six children ages 0-14 are killed in auto accidents across the country and 732 are injured (National Center for Health Statistics).

Even car seats that are strapped into place may be installed incorrectly. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, four out of five car seats are improperly installed. In 2001, almost 500 children under the age of five were killed in auto mobile accidents, with as many as 31,700 injured. When car restraints are used properly, the risk of fatalities can be drastically reduced by 71% for infants and 54% with toddlers (National Center for Statistics and Analysis).

Always check with the instructions that come with your safety seat to find out what slots to use. Harness straps should be at or below the infants shoulders, fitting snugly in a relatively straight line without sagging. The harness chest clip should be placed at armpit level, keeping the harness straps positioned properly. Also read your vehicle owners seat belt and child seat installation section, especially if your car is older than 1996, it may not have adequate belt-locking capabilities.

Infants should remain rear-facing at least until their first birthday AND weigh twenty-pounds. Not either/or, but meet BOTH requirements. Infants weighing 20 pounds or more before their first birthday should also remain in a rear facing convertible child safety seat rated for heavier infants. A child’s spinal cord is forming throughout the first year of life. This is the strongest part of an infants body that can better absorb the sizeable forces of a crash. If faced forward too early, the infants’ head can catapult forward, causing his underdeveloped spine to expose his spinal cord thus inflicting paralysis or death. Thirty percent of infants are inappropriately turned forward before age one and 20 pounds (Florida Child Passenger Safety and Resource Center).

Over the past five years, millions of safety seats have been recalled for a variety of reasons, faulty latches, flammable material, plastic shell fractures, etc. To check your seat against the list of recalls, you will need to know the seats model name, model number and manufacture date. All information can be found on the seat itself.

A child safety seat should fit your child properly, be easy to use and install. To be certain you’ve installed the safety seat correctly, have it checked at a child safety seat inspection station or by a certified child passenger safety technician. To find one near you, visit www.seatcheck.org