How Car Seats Work

Car safety is extremely important in our everyday lives, both for ourselves and our children. And while luckily we adults can benefit from a simple contraption such as a seatbelt or an airbag to provide us with the safety we need, our children are not that fortunate. These readily accessible devices were simply not designed for their small figures, so there has to be a separate solution to sufficiently secure your little ones for the unlikely event of a car accident.

The child's car seat is the perfect way to do this, but unless you know how it actually works, you're going to have a hard time setting it up correctly and you might even cause injury to your child - which I'm sure you do not want to do!

A child's car seat protects your offspring in three different ways that actually work in tandem with each other:

1) They reduce the side-impact using special lateral cushions to absorb horizontal forces

2) They use a five-point harness instead of a three-point one to make sure the impending forces are more evenly distributed.

3) They're latched to the actual car seat with a tether to prevent the child's seat from moving upon impact.

All of these working together make sure that your child is as protected as possible in the event of an accident. Now, to make sure you're actually offering your child the needed protection, it's essential to install the seat correctly in accordance with applicable car seat laws.. If it's a rear-facing seat, check that the harness slot is at shoulder-height. Make sure that the harness isn't twisted, and always check that the recline is at the correct angle (there should be an angle indicator on the seat itself.

For further information, please reference the given infographic below that provides intuitive instructions and illustrations for how to properly install a child's car seat.