Published: Feb 4, 2014
By Michael Smith, North American Correspondent, MedPage Today
Car crashes are killing fewer children, a CDC study found, but there’s still room for improvement.
From 2002 through 2011, the annual rate of death in car accidents for children 12 and younger fell 43%, according to CDC Director Thomas Frieden, MD.
But despite the decrease, 9,182 children 12 and under died in motor vehicle crashes in the U.S. over the 10-year study period, Frieden told reporters in a telephone briefing.
“Thousands of kids are at risk on the road because they’re not buckled up,” Frieden said.
Indeed, he said that in 2011 — the last year of the study — one in three of the children who died was not properly restrained in a car seat, booster seat, or with a seat belt.
The findings are based on data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, according to Erin Sauber-Schatz, PhD, MPH, of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control in Atlanta.
The system picks up motor vehicle accidents in which vehicle occupants or non-occupants, such as pedestrians, die within 30 days, Sauber-Schatz and colleagues noted online in a Vital Signs study in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
For this analysis, her group restricted the analysis to occupants 12 and younger in passenger vehicles, such as cars, vans, and pickup trucks.
The key finding was that the overall death rate has fallen markedly, from 2.2 deaths per 100,000 children 12 and under in 2002 to just 1.2 per 100,000 in 2011.
“We are encouraged by this improvement,” she said, “but still more than 650 children 12 and younger were killed in crashes in 2011.”
“That’s more than a dozen children every week,” she said.
To get an idea of change in deaths rates by age, sex, and race/ethnicity, the researchers looked at combined data for 2009 and 2010, in order to account for small numbers.
There were no significant differences by age or by sex, but the death rate among children 12 and under was higher for blacks than for whites: 1.5 compared with 1.0 deaths per 100,000 population.
Black children 12 and under were also more likely than whites to have been unrestrained at the time of the fatal crash (45% compared with 26%), the researchers found.
Death rates were not significantly different for Hispanic and white children, but Hispanic kids were again more likely to have been unrestrained at the time of the fatal accident (46% versus 26%).
On the other hand, more parents appear to be using proper restraints, the investigators found. From 2002-2003 to 2009-2010, the proportion of unrestrained child deaths decreased significantly among children under 12 years by 27% for whites, 16% for blacks, and 14% for Hispanics.
Frieden said parents should make sure their children use age- and size-appropriate car seats, booster seats, or seat belts on every trip.
The agency suggests kids from birth to age 2 should be in a rear-facing car seat. From 2 until at least 5, they should be in a forward-facing car seat unless they exceed the weight or height limits of the seat.
Kids 5 and older should use a booster seat, until they are big enough that an adult seat belt fits them properly, with the lap belt across the upper thighs and the shoulder belt below the neck.
“The first step (to save lives) is buckling up — every child of every age on every trip,” Frieden said.