title: Development of an alternative five-point restraint harness to accommodate children with special healthcare needs in child safety seats.
abstract: Commercial automotive child restraint systems (CRSs) do not accommodate all children with special healthcare needs. This study developed an alternative harness for a commercial CRS to meet the needs of children for whom a five-point harness cannot be positioned over medically involved areas and/or children whose conditions require the harness belts to be threaded through medical devices. After initial design work and a series of frontal sled-impact tests, one of two prototype designs was chosen for fit testing on children with and without healthcare conditions. After a minor modification, additional sled-impact testing was conducted to determine compliance of the system to federal standards. The CRS with alternate harness provides good fit to children with a variety of healthcare needs and complies with all performance criteria of FMVSS 213, with the exception of peak forward head excursion using the Hybrid III 6-year-old crash-test dummy. It is expected that all performance criteria will be met using the newly-issued federal allowance to conduct CRS frontal-impact tests using an earlier version of the dummy. The new harness shows promise as a low-cost solution for achieving a safer level of transportation for children who may otherwise travel unrestrained or with a severely misused CRS harness.
authors.affiliation: University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. lbrinkey@med.umich.edu
authors.forename: Lori
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Brinkey
authors.forename: Miriam
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Manary
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Santioni
mesh_terms: D000056:Accident Prevention; D002648:Child; D057207:Child Restraint Systems; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D019988:Children with Disabilities; D004867:Equipment Design / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008297:Male; D018986:Motor Vehicles; D012622:Seat Belts; D014186:Transportation