Child car seats: A matter of life and death

Drivers who fail to properly secure children in their vehicles can receive three demerit points and be fined $150. If convicted, they can be fined up to $1,000, and jailed for up to three months.

A KKH study on the use of car seats found that parents did not know how to properly install one. Some found it inconvenient to use.

To remedy this, KKH started its car seat clinic in 2021. Held at the hospital’s carpark thrice a year, trained staff teach parents how to correctly install a car seat, and how to secure their children in it.

Ms Elisa Ong, 39, attended one session in April.

The user interface designer said she had just bought a $700 car seat for her four-month-old son, Aiden, but was unsure if she had installed it correctly. She also has a three-year-old daughter, who rides in their car strapped into a RideSafer Travel Vest.

The vest is an alternative to child seats.

She said: “I thought it was important for my child to be properly secured in a car seat because of the increasing number of road traffic accidents.”

In 2025, the hospital introduced a newborn car seat programme, where KKH loans a car seat to parents of children born in the hospital for a year. Dr Tan said KKH worked with the Traffic Police, Komoco Motors and Mothercare to develop the programme.

After the child’s first birthday, parents who return the car seat will receive a subsidy for their next car seat purchase.

The programme has, so far, benefited more than 350 families.

Dr Tan said head injuries are the most common among children involved in traffic accidents. These include blunt head injuries, skull fractures and brain bleeds.

“A seat belt is supposed to protect a person by spreading the force of a crash over the strongest parts of the body, which are the shoulders and the hips. If there is no seat belt or car seat, the child may get flung within, or even out of the car.”

In September 2021, a two-month-old girl died after her father, who was driving, made a discretionary right turn along Tampines Avenue 10. A motorcyclist, who had the right of way, but was estimated to be going at 97kmh to 129kmh, collided into them.

The girl was held by her mother, who was in the back seat. She was flung out of her mother’s arms and died that day. The father was fined $5,000 for driving without due care, leading to an accident that killed his daughter. 

Besides car seats, Dr Tan noted, it is also important to use age-appropriate restraints.

He said children should use an adult seat belt when they are about 1.4m tall. The lap belt should fit across the upper thigh and the shoulder belt should be across the chest.

He once saw a child who came into KKH’s children emergency department with a bruise across his abdomen.

Said Dr Tan: “He looked well and could walk. But we evaluated him further and found he had ruptured his intestines and needed surgery. This would have been prevented if he had been in a booster seat.”

Dr Tan said he has seen too often how a child’s life can change in a single moment.

He said: “Every time we treat a child with life-altering injuries, it’s a stark, heartbreaking reminder that this could happen to any family. The most difficult truth is that so many of these devastating injuries, and even deaths, are entirely preventable.”