How does a child safety seat protect my child during a car collision?
A lot of safety comes from proper positioning of the safety seat in the car, the harness on the child, and the child in the seat. All of those things that you do ahead of time mean that if you are hit (and usually we don't know we are going to be hit, because would you get in a vehicle if you thought you were going to be in a collision? Of course not.) then your child is protected. You want to have the positioning proper so that all the forces are taken in the right parts of the child's body; so that the forces are absorbed in the frame of the vehicle, to which you are attaching the safety seat. The child safety seat is attached to the car with the safety belt or the LATCH attachment. What the LATCH attachment does is pull the forces into the frame of the vehicle rather than into your child's body. Using a forward-facing seat with a harness, you also want to make sure that whether you're using the LATCH attachments or the safety belt system to hold the seat in, you do attach that top tether strap. That reduces how far forward your child's head will go in a crash. Your child's head is the most important part of that youngster's body. You want to protect that child from brain damage.
