Car Seat Safety Awareness: What you need to know about car accidents and car seats

Let me be honest here, it really sincerely worries me how many parents don’t take the safety of their child in a car seriously. It almost seems like everyone thinks it’s a big joke!

Now, let’s say you were recently in a car accident. Do you know what to do afterwards to make sure your baby remains safe in the car? Well, lucky we’re about to cover it. Hopefully by the end of this, you’ll have a more clear idea.

Replace the Car Seat

Once your car seat has been in a serious accident, it needs to be replaced. You’ve seen what force does to the frame of your car and it can do the same to the car seat. Even if it looks fine, it may not be safe. For all you know, the plastic has been weakened by the impact and won’t be able to protect your baby in future instances. That’s a risk you should not be willing to take! You need to replace that bad boy immediately.

Car Insurance Companies Will Help

If you provide the receipt to your car insurance provider, they may reimburse you for the seat. Many may try to say that they have trouble remembering if they’re supposed to replace them or not, but they are! If at all possible, locate the manual and show them the snippet that says they need to replace them. They must replace them! Must! They don’t even have to be the same model. Replacing the car seat is very important so don’t overlook a single thing!

Recycle Your Seat

When you are getting rid of the seat that was in the crash, you need to be careful how you go about this. Some places, you can just leave it on the curb and it can be picked up, others it’s not as simple. Many Farmer’s Markets have a program where they will take the fabric from the seat and reuse it for many purposes.

There’s also programs that will take them for training purposes only for important car seat courses. If none of these are an option, you need to be extra careful as to how you recycle your seat.

First, take off every piece of foam or fabric and throw it away separate from the carseat itself. Then, you need to take a sharpie and write (in big bold letters) “SEAT NOT SAFE. DO NOT USE!!”. You don’t want someone to find it and attempt to use it under any circumstance.

What have you done after a car accident?

*This post was written by our blogger Amber Kristine. She's a mother of a 2 year old and is also blogs at www.amberkristine.com*