TUESDAY, March 5, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- Compact extended-cab pickup trucks may seem like a decent way to ferry a family around, but not if you're hoping for a safe ride.
That's according to a new study that says children who travel in the back seats of these light trucks are far more likely to be injured in crashes than kids stationed in the rear of passenger cars and other vehicles.
Side-facing jump seats in extended-cab pickups are exempt from government safety rules, and the seats have only lap belts instead of full lap and shoulder restraints. And they're not equipped to hold infant car seats or booster seats for young children.
"Children will sit in the backs of these vehicles, and we need to make sure that every seating position is safe for all occupants," says Dr. Flaura Koplin Winston, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and the study's lead author.
Three-quarters of the pickup trucks in this country are at least occasionally used for personal transportation, Winston adds. A report on the findings appears in tomorrow's Journal of the American Medical Association.
The researchers became suspicious of a problem with pickups when, in reviewing accident data, they noticed a "blip" in injuries to children in crashes involving the vehicles, Winston says. So she and her colleagues sought to learn if certain kinds of trucks were associated with a greater risk of injury to young passengers. Compact trucks, which weigh less than 6,000 pounds laden, have become increasingly popular, both for hauling and transportation.
Winston's group analyzed wrecks involving 7,192 pickups with at least two rows of seats in which 11,335 children age 15 or under were riding. Of those, 1,356 children, or 1.6 percent, were injured in the collisions. The injuries included facial cuts, broken bones, brain damage, and other serious trauma.
After taking into account factors like age, use of seat belts and the nature of the impact, children riding in the back seats of compact, extended-cab trucks were almost three times as likely to be injured in a crash as those traveling in other vehicles, Winston's group found. And their risk of injury was almost five times greater than that for children riding in the rear seats of those other vehicles. Riding in the front seat of the pickups, however, did not increase their risk of injury.
From interviews with drivers, the researchers learned that in crashes where children were thrown against the rear interior of a vehicle, the kids were more likely to be hurt if that vehicle was a compact truck.
"That suggests that there's insufficient padding" in the extended cab to protect passengers, Winston says.
Eron Shosteck, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, says the study reinforces what his group's members have been telling consumers.
"These trucks are not designed to be family vehicles," he says. "These are primarily work vehicles for the farm, for hauling lumber."
Shosteck, whose association represents 13 auto companies, which together produce 90 percent of the vehicles sold in the United States, says parents are better off buying sport utility vehicles and minivans. When a young child must be in a pickup, they should sit in the front seat with the airbag switched off, he says.
Zoe Younker, a spokeswoman for State Farm Insurance in Bloomington, Ill., which funded the study, says her company won't use the study information to raise premiums for their customers who drive extended-cab trucks. But, Younker adds, "We're discouraging folks from using that as a family vehicle and trying to encourage them to use other forms of transportation."
Tim Hurd, a spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, says his agency is reviewing the new findings and will decide whether to act on them. In the meantime, he says, parents shouldn't wait for new federal regulations.
"A family can take care of this tomorrow. They don't have to put a child in a [cab] seat when they have an alternative" like a car safety seat or a booster, Hurd says.
What to Do: For more on child safety on the road, check out State Farm Insurance, or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
