Partners for Child Passenger Safety is a new crash injury surveillance system devoted exclusively to children. Data regarding children in newer vehicle crashes reported to State Farm Insurance Companies are transferred to The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) daily. Between June and November, 1998, CHOP received 18,101 claims involving 26,773 children and conducted telephone interviews on a sample of 1879 crashes. Overall restraint usage was high. However, many children were inappropriately restrained in seat belts and a third of children were front-seated. It is imperative to continue to focus educational, legislative, and engineering interventions to prevent these risk behaviours. (A)
Abstract