DENVER – Everyone is always told how important it is to buckle up and make sure children are properly secured inside of moving vehicles. But there’s a hidden danger a lot of people don’t know about: Driver and passenger seats that break after a minor crash, can strike the children sitting in the back seat.
Parents are told the safest place for your child is in a car seat in the back, but what you don’t know about your front seats could seriously injure or kill them.
WTVR sister station, KDVR in Denver, uncovered 100 cases in which children across the country have died because of seat back failure.
Liz and Andrew Warner of Littleton lost their 17-month-old daughter, Taylor.
"It was head trauma. The seat hit her in the face and that’s what caused the brain bleed they couldn’t stop,” Liz Warner said.
Taylor was in her car seat when the Warners' 2010 Honda Odyssey was rear ended. The driver’s seat collapsed on impact and struck Taylor in the face. She never regained consciousness.
“That was it. We didn’t get to know her anymore,” Liz Warner said.
After the Warners buried their baby girl, they realized they were not alone. According to the Center for Auto Safety, 898 children have been killed in rear-end collisions in the past 15 years, all of them sitting in the back seat.
The Problem Solvers dug up 100 lawsuits, blaming those deaths on seat back failures.
Crash test video shows what happens when a front seat breaks. The driver or passenger is thrust into the back, often delivering a fatal blow to the child behind him or her. Seat back failure has also caused hundreds of catastrophic injuries, to the people seated in the front.
“It’s a bigger problem than most people think,” said Jim Gilbert of the Gilbert Law group in Arvada.
