Sitting in the rear seat of a vehicle rather than in the front seat reduces childrenÆs risk of injury or death by 35% in the event of a crash. As road trauma is a leading cause of child morbidity and mortality in highly motorised nations, even in countries where restraint use is high, encouraging parents to place children in the rear seats of vehicles offers a low-cost avenue to improving childrenÆs overall health. However, little is known about the factors that affect parentsÆ decisions about seating positions. Focus group discussions were held with urban parent-drivers to elicit their concerns about childrenÆs car safety and barriers to rear-seat use. Most parents had a rule that children should sit in the rear seat. Parents said that they relaxed these rules for a variety of reasons including social pressure, perceptions of the trip as short and because children regard sitting in the front seat as a treat. Parenting style, child cooperativeness, social pressure and inability to justify the risk of injury were identified as barriers to rear-seat travel. Effective interventions to increase the proportion of children travelling in the rear seat should address parentsÆ experiences of pressure to relax seating rules and risk perception, as well as provide strategies that support sound parental safety decisions. (Author/publisher).
Abstract