Rearward facing travel for every child's safety

Abstract: This study was made within the Child Safety group at Volvo Car Corporation.  The purpose of this bachelor thesis was to study the different aspects of rearward facing child restraint systems, which is the safest way for small children to travel, in order to suggest improvements in the development of child restraint systems. The studies included scientific articles regarding child safety and fatally injured children in car accidents, both in Sweden and internationally. The overall aim is to find factors that enables the increase in usage of rearward facing child restraint systems, including the increase of usage time to as long as possible.   Swedish accident data, obtained by the Swedish Traffic Data Acquisation, was studied. It was found that the fatally injured children during car accidents in Sweden between the years 2000-2016 commonly were involved in extraordinarily accident scenarios with an outcome independent of how they were restrained. The literature study and the survey that was made were both supporting the statement of inconvenience while using rearward facing child restraint systems. The inconvenience often corresponded to different types of misuse. The main issue with rearward facing according to the responding parents was lack of leg space, both for their child but also for the driver and the front seat passenger. These issues made some parents turning their children forward facing at early age, whereas they could still fit in the rearward facing child restraint system.   One key in order to increase the global use of rearward facing child restraint systems lies in changes of the materials and design. A more lightweight and compact design is suggested, providing a more spacious travel environment for the children and easier mounting for the parents. The need of education is apparent, preferable by means of social media due to the easiness of sending information globally with low cost.