Warning! Alerted by the misuse of baby seats in cars

Safety seats are essential to protect children while traveling, but a new study from the University of Virginia (USA) warned of the need to follow seat instructions and use them only for the purposes for which they were designed.

In a study of infant deaths occurring while children were sleeping in seats, researchers determined that over 60% of deaths were in car seats. In less than 10% of cases, the safety seats were used according to the instructions. "Although safety seats are important when traveling with a baby, it is best not to let him sleep when he is at home.The safest place to allow a baby to sleep is on a firm and flat surface. " recalls researcher and pediatrician Rachel Moon, one of the people responsible for the job.

Moon and her colleagues set out to shed light on an ill-documented category of infant deaths: deaths while sleeping on chairs, such as strollers and stroller seats. The American Academy of Pediatrics advises children to sleep regularly with such devices.

Although the researchers did not establish why babies were in car seats when they were not traveling, they found that some parents may not have been able to pay a crib or that they used these seats to keep the children calm while the parents were performing other duties.

After car seats, swings and other similar places (122 deaths, 35.1%) were the favorite place of sleep-related babies. Strollers were the site of only 2% of deaths (seven out of 348). As a general rule, almost two-thirds of the deaths in the seats took place while the devices were not used for the purposes for which they were designed and in accordance with their instructions, according to the researchers' findings.