Children's use of restraint systems that don't properly fit them can lead to injuries. Booster seats are intended to bridge the gap between the time the child outgrows a front facing toddler seat to the time when the seat belt properly fits the child. Safety professionals recommend that children use booster seats from about 40 to 80 pounds. Yet the data presented in Chapters 3 and 4 show these children often using seat belts instead. One question is whether people are aware of booster seats. Those considered most likely to have heard of them would be the parent/caregiver group. Yet while 76% said they were aware of booster seats, 21% had not heard of them and 3% were unsure. Among those aware of booster seats, 53% said they had used them with their child(ren).

The most frequent age at which parents/caregivers started using booster seats with their child(ren) was age three (40%). However, more than one-fourth (28%) of parents/caregivers who had used booster seats said they had begun using them before the child reached that age.

During pre-testing of the questionnaire, subjects participating in the testing expressed concern about the safety of booster seats. As a consequence, the 1998 survey added a new question asking if the respondent had any concerns about the safety of booster seats. This question was asked only of parents/caregivers who had said they were aware of booster seats. Among the 76% of parents/caregivers who had seen or heard of booster seats, almost one-third (30%) had concerns about their safety and another 7% were unsure.

When asked what concerns they had about the safety of booster seats, the parents/caregivers criticized them as loose fitting and unstable systems that would not adequately restrain the child in a crash. More than half (52%) complained that the restraints were inadequate to hold the child while 30% expressed anxiety that the seat was not securely attached and was unstable. 

In total, 24% of parents/caregivers either said they were not aware of booster seats or else were unsure if they had seen or heard about them (see page 76). Almost one-fourth of parents/ caregivers (23%) had heard of booster seats and had concerns about them (i.e., 30% of the 76% who were aware of booster seats). Six percent were aware of booster seats, but unsure whether they had concerns about their safety. Fewer than half of all parents/caregivers (48%) could say that they were aware of booster seats, and had no concerns about their safety.

If the designated child in the survey at least on occasion rode in a child safety seat, then the interviewers asked the respondents if they expected the child to use “a different type of car seat, a seat belt, or something else” after outgrowing the current seat. In general, children in rear facing seats were expected to move on to other safety seats, although 14% expected the child to use seat belts. Expectations became more varied with front facing safety seats as slightly more than half (55%) said that the child would use a different seat or booster seat while 43% either answered that the child would graduate to seat belts or else that they did not know what would happen.