The first recorded report of a child restraint in an automobile was in 1898. The device was little more than a drawstring bag that would attach to the actual car seat. It was only designed to prevent little children from falling off their seats when the car was in motion.
Back then, with very few cars on the road and with limited high speed vehicles, child restraint safety wasn’t a big priority. The cars of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century were mostly for recreation of the wealthy. They were extremely expensive and very unreliable.
The beginning of the twentieth century brought the creation of Henry Ford’s assembly line factories which could build hundreds of cars every month. This brought the price of the car down to a more reasonable level, and people everywhere could suddenly afford to drive. At the same time the amount of car accidents increased, with fatalities also rising.
Not until the 1930’s did automobile manufacturers design a working model of a child car seat. The seat was designed similarly to prior models which were meant to only keep children from moving around in the car. They did little to provide protection during a car accident. Unfortunately, it would take another 30 years before anything serious would be done about it.
In the 1960’s, Swedish car manufacturers began to address the issue of child safety in automobiles. They developed the first rear-facing child car seat designed to prevent injury during an auto accident.
Then in the 1970s, faced with little demand for car seats, a huge advertising push was implemented to educate the public of the importance of using child safety seats. Members of the medical community, consumer groups, safety seat manufacturers, and insurance companies among others got together and showed the general public that safety seats for children were a necessary device for keeping their children alive in the case of a collision.
By 1984, nearly half of the children from ages 0-4 were riding in some form of child safety seat. Those numbers continue to grow to this day, where nearly all of the children requiring a safety seat are in one when they go anywhere in a vehicle.
Today, infant and child car seats are in all vehicles designed to carry passengers. There is a huge need for them in today’s society of safety concerned parents, as such car seat manufacturers have been quick to fill that need. There are now hundreds of different models of car seats being sold today for babies of all shapes and sizes. It looks as though child safety seats are taking hold and are here to stay.
