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Safety experts and parents say China urgently needs to implement standards on car seats for children to prevent needless deaths and injuries from highway accidents.
Unlike many Western countries, China has no laws requiring the use of child safety seats or standards to ensure the devices are properly made and installed, according to interviews with car industry experts and product regulators.
A Shanghai Daily survey found that few safety seats are available on the local market and those that are sold may be of poor quality.
In addition, few local parents seem to understand the lifesaving qualities of restraint devices.
"We hope the Chinese traffic police and related authorities will soon set up rules to tackle the problem," said Wang Lin of the Chinese branch of Safe Kids Worldwide, a global non-profit network whose goal is to prevent accidental injuries among youngsters.
Wang said the organization is looking forward to launching programs to raise awareness among parents and regulators about the importance of car safety equipment.
Among the problems is the fact that there are no figures available on how many Shanghai children died or were injured in car accidents because they were not properly strapped in, or on how many parents have installed the seats in their cars.
According to Safe Kids, traffic accidents are the third-leading cause of injury and death among Chinese children.
A Shanghai police investigation of road accidents between 2000 and 2004 found that children under age 7 and people over 66 suffered the highest traffic accident death rates among all age groups.
Lu Yiming, an expert in trauma treatment at Ruijin Hospital, said young children are extremely vulnerable in car crashes.
"Children are smaller and weaker physically, and their head accounts for a much larger proportion of the body, which means they are more easily thrown forward and suffer deadly injuries in a serious collision," Lu said.
Other countries have taken steps to address the problem.
The US Department of Transportation, for instance, requires that all children age 12 and under must be properly restrained while riding in a car. Similar laws requiring mandatory use of child safety seats have been implemented in many other nations.
In Sweden, Volvo studied more than 30,000 traffic accidents between 1976 and 2000 and found that serious injuries and deaths to children in road accidents had declined by nearly 60 percent during the period due to the use of safety belts and child safety seats.
Regulatory authorities and parents in China, however, have been slow to demand action.
"So far, there are no specific industrial rules in China to regulate and supervise design and production of child safety seats," said Yang Nianzu of the Shanghai Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision.
Yang said most of the seats sold on the domestic market appear to be rough copies of foreign brands, and their protective ability hasn't been verified.
A good child safety seat can sell for US$500 to US$800, but those available in Shanghai are going for much less, raising quality questions.
A Shanghai Daily check among a dozen car accessory stores found the price of child safety seats ranged from several hundred yuan to no more than 2,000 yuan (US$248).
Feng Weili, owner of an auto parts store on Weihai Road, said his domestic brand seats sell for between 570 and 600 yuan while imported products range from 1,400 to 1,500 yuan.
But the seats are available only by special order because there are few buyers. And that points up another problem: the apparent lack of interest in child safety seats among parents.
"We tried selling them at the beginning of last year, but for months, we sold only one," Feng said.
Other local auto accessory stores contacted either never heard of the seats or had no plans to sell them.
Safety experts hope attitudes will change as more people buy cars. But for those who are already converts, finding a quality seat is perhaps the biggest issue.
"I was at a loss to figure out which brands are reliable since there are no market instructions or any other guidelines," said Vivian Chen, mother of a 1-year-old girl.
She finally ordered a safety seat from abroad at a considerable price after giving up on the local market.
(Shanghai Daily December 8, 2005)
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