Kathy Funderburk has seen and heard it all when it comes to making sure children are protected at home, school and, especially, on the state’s third deadliest highways in the nation.
Infants being beheaded by air bags deploying at 200 mph.
Toddlers being thrown through windshields before bouncing onto concrete pavement.
These scenarios are not new to Funderburk and are a direct result of children being improperly restrained in vehicles, or sometimes not at all.
“Three out of four die,” Funderburk said. Ignorance is no excuse to the pediatric nurse and executive director of the Safe Kids Coalition of Orangeburg, Bamberg and Calhoun counties, which is led by the Regional Medical Center. In existence since 1995, the O-B-C Safe Kids Coalition is dedicated to educating parents and caregivers that properly restraining children in automobiles can easily become a matter of life and death.
’False sense of security’
“I have been giving a lot of thought to the rash of car crashes that have recently occurred with the resulting injury and death to the area’s youngest residents. Accidental injury is the number one killer of children birth to 14 years of age,” Funderburk said. “Proper restraint is a family affair every time the ignition is started, and education is a solution that would decrease the frequency of headlines (like) ’Toddler killed in car crash.’”
Funderburk said state child restraint laws have improved and toughened, particularly with an increase in fines from $25 to $150 for violators of the South Carolina Child Passenger Safety Seat Law.
“I wouldn’t say they’ve increased, however, in the fact that children must be restrained until at least six years of age. States are passing laws that children should be restrained in boosters until they’re at least 8 and are coming more in line with safest practices,” she said.
Under the law, a child from birth up to one year of age, or who weighs less than 20 pounds, must be properly secured in a rear-facing child safety seat which meets the standards prescribed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. A child, who is at least one year old but less than 6 and who weighs at least 20 pounds but less than 40 pounds, must be secured in a forward-facing child safety seat provided in the motor vehicle and meeting NHTSA standards.
Also under the law, a child less than 6 must not occupy a front passenger seat of a vehicle. This restriction does not apply if the motor vehicle does not have rear passenger seats, or if other children less than age 6 occupy all rear passenger seats.
Funderburk said parents are not always following the rules.
“Infants are being beheaded because of being in rear-facing child safety seats in front of active air bags. Let us learn the lesson from these tragedies. Typically in children, their heads are bigger proportionally to their bodies than adults. So, it’s head injuries that are most common here. Also, if children too young and too small are using seat belts, whether correctly or not, abdominal and spinal cord injuries are predominant,” Funderburk said.
Improper usage of seat belts can result in neck injuries or total ejection from the vehicle because seat belts were made for people 4 feet 9 inches tall and 80 pounds, she said.
“I think the parents suffer from a false sense of security that if they place a seat belt on a child, they’re good to go,” said Funderburk, adding that infants under age 1 should face the back of the car in a car seat. She said the baby’s seat should be buckled tightly in the car and doesn’t move more than one inch when pulled.
“You put the car seat’s harness clip at the baby’s armpit level so that those straps will stay on the little narrow shoulders in the event of a car crash. To know if the straps are snug enough, you put your fingers at the baby’s armpit level. If just the width of your fingers can fit under those straps, that’s how snug it should be,” Funderburk said.
Under state law, a child who is at least one year old but less than 6 and weighs at least 40 pounds but not more than 80 pounds must be secured by a belt-positioning booster seat. The seat must be used with both lap and shoulder belts. A child who’s at least one year old, but less than 6 and weighs more than 80 pounds may be restrained in an adult safety belt.
According to the law, if a child less than 6 can sit with his back straight against the vehicle’s seat, with his knees bent over the vehicle’s seat edge without slouching, he/she may be seated in the regular back seat and secured by an adult safety belt.
“The booster seat is forward facing. Ideally, it is used until a child is 4 foot 9 inches and 80 pounds,” Funderburk said.
The fact that South Carolina has the third deadliest highways has to do with the fact that “we have that slow-to-adopt primary seat belt law,” she said. “We missed out on a financial gain that the U.S. government was prepared to give us to improve our highways because we initially resisted adopting a primary seat belt law.”
“The best seat is one that parents can afford, one that fits in their car and one that they’re able to use. You don’t have to spend $250 on a car seat to have it be a good one,” Funderburk said. “The first thing you want to do is read the owner’s manual for your car to see what they have to say about child safety placement. Then you want to read the directions that come with a child safety seat.”
Funderburk conducts free child safety seat placement training in schools and other venues as well as by appointment with parents and caregivers. She is also the creator of the nationally recognized “Just the Ticket” program. If a person is pulled over by an officer and found in violation of the state Child Passenger Safety Seat Law, they’re given a ticket. A portion of that ticket, includes Funderburk’s contact information for violators to become trained in properly installing a child restraint. For one time only, a violator’s charge is dismissed upon completion of the training.
“This way, an officer can identify a child at risk and then get parents educated. ... We are educating the public with their own child, car seat and car on how that child needs to be riding safely,” she said.
Avoidable deaths
Dr. Paul Banish, a surgeon at the RMC, said the mother of a three-year-old car crash victim was understandably “mentally crushed.”
“There’s really no reason that this child should have died at all. ... But once you get ejected from the automobile, your chance of a fatality is so much higher,” he said.
Such deaths are “completely avoidable,” Banish said, touting the importance of age- and size-appropriate child restraint systems.
“If a kid’s not restrained, he’s definitely going to die. There have been lots of kids that have sustained major injuries. They’re just a projectile that’s going to fly out of the window,” Banish said, adding that parents who don’t securely buckle their children in are putting their lives in danger.
“They’re seriously keeping their kids at peril. A slow-speed accident can really injure them. That could either seriously injure, paralyze or kill a kid if an air bag deploys. It doesn’t take a lot of force to do it,” Banish said. “Being close to home or not going very far is not excuse.”
Ree Mallison, director of SAFE KIDS South Carolina, said a car seat is the single most important safety device in an automobile besides a seat belt.
“The way children get head and spinal cord injuries is being thrown from the car, or thrown around the car and hitting other people’s heads. Not properly restraining them is the most dangerous thing you can do for a child. I can’t imagine putting my most precious cargo unrestrained in a car,” Mallison said.
Terecia Wilson, a S.C SAFE KIDS board member, said there are actually three collisions that occur in a car crash: vehicle, human and internal.
She said frontal, off-center, lateral, rear-end, vault, roll-over and rotate and ejection are all crash types which carry the risk of serious injury, if not death. Pelvis, leg and spinal column fractures, torn neck tendons and chest compression are among the injuries.
“The importance of being restrained is you’re going to prevent injuries in ... different ways. You’re going to prevent a person from being ejected. The restraint itself contacts the body at the strongest part of its structure, so it helps the body to avoid stress as a result. For example, a rear-facing infant seat spreads the crash force over the entire head, back and neck, which are the strongest parts of an infant’s body,” Wilson said.
“Crashes occur so frequently in our state. One is reported in our state about every four and a half minutes. So, properly fastened safety belts for adults and having your child in an age-appropriate child safety or booster seat is their best protection. You are 30 percent safer in the back seat. It’s always important to remember that children age 12 and under should ride in the back-seat,” Wilson said, noting that education is the key to safety.
“I think the most important thing that we can do as parents to protect our children is to make sure we are buckled up. By doing so, we’re showing them it’s important to ride safely. By making sure our children are properly restrained, we are establishing a habit for them that may someday save their life,” Wilson said.
The state Department of Transportation’s “A Parent’s Guide To Traffic Safety” can be accessed by calling the state DOT’s safety office at 803-737-1161. Every state has a child passenger safety law. To find the child passenger safety law and safety belt laws in your state, go to www.usa.safekids.org. For more information about O-B-C SAFE KIDS services, contact Funderburk at 803-395-2822.
T&D Staff Writer Dionne Gleaton can be reached by e-mail at dgleaton@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5534. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.