How to Improve the Effectiveness of Child Safety Seats
(ARA) - More than 63 percent of all child safety seats are improperly installed. Yet most parents are not negligent, they are simply unable to easily adjust the seats in the car.

According to the National SAFE KIDS Campaign, one of the most difficult things for parents to do is to tighten the seat belt that secures their child's safety seat. "Historically, getting the seat belt tight required size, strength and a degree in mechanical engineering," says Brad Keller, president of Sunshine Kids Juvenile Products.

Keller's company makes an innovative solution called "Mighty-Tite," a seat belt tightening device that helps parents get a secure fit with all types of safety seats. Mighty-Tite is an easy-to-use ratchet that slips onto the seat belt itself. With just a few clicks of the handle, any mom can get the seat belt much tighter than the biggest man can by hand. Says Keller, "We've basically eliminated the need for strength and body size to install a safety seat tightly."

But, when you are dealing with the safety of children, it is essential to be able to prove safety claims, so Keller arranged a series of crash tests comparing car seats tightened with Mighty-Tite to car seats tightened only by hand. An independent quality assurance consultant designed and executed the laboratory testing at one of the foremost certified automobile testing labs in the country.

The test results showed that when safety seats are properly installed (with less than 1 inch of wiggle room or side-to-side movement), there is a reduction in the potential injury to a child in an automobile crash. These results also showed that when the Mighty-Tite is used to install the safety seat, it helps to even further reduce this potential injury by a significant amount. Tighter is better.

"We have found that because Mighty-Tite is so easy to use, parents become much more proactive about making sure the seat is tightly secured, because it's now something they know they can do well." said Keller.

This isn't the only testing that Mighty-Tite has been through. The seat belt tightening device has also been extensively tested using a variety of safety seats in the United States and Europe. The bottom line result is that Mighty-Tite holds the safety seat tight and secure during the entire crash test scenario and meets all injury criteria of the National Highway Transportation Safety Association's FMVSS213.

Mighty-Tite has seals of approval from organizations throughout the United States and Europe. But most importantly, Mighty-Tite has been successfully and safely used by hundreds of thousands of parents and their children around the world.

Sunshine Kids Juvenile Products specializes in safety products for travel. For more information go to www.mighty-tite.com.

Courtesy of ARA Content