rf'ing safety....

agurlsride

New member
Ok I've seen this a few times on this forum but is rf'ing REALLY 500% safer than ff'ing or is that just an arbitrary number to emphasize how much safer it is. Don't get me wrong, all of my kids rf'ed until they were at least 2yrs old....one made it to 3yrs. I just wanted to have some ammo when talking to parents who've rf'ed their child at or before 1yr. I work at a childrens hospital so I see A LOT of parents and kids.
 
ADS

Jennifer mom to my 7

Well-known member
This actually comes from the Marilyn Bull article. The actual statistic is that a forward facing child under the age of 2 is 5 times more likely to be seriously injured or killed than a rear facing child. Somehow that has been translated to 500 % safer to rear face than forward face to make it seem easier for the parent to understand maybe? I usually just give the info I just said, rather than the 500% safer. And link to the articles:)
 

Adventuredad

New member
I've seen numbers a bit higher, 532%, and also a bit lower. I think the number is difficult for most parents to understand so I try instead to give some examples of what what happen if 100 kids crashed rf compared t ff. Parents seem to listen closely then.
 

Stresch

New member
I've seen numbers a bit higher, 532%, and also a bit lower. I think the number is difficult for most parents to understand so I try instead to give some examples of what what happen if 100 kids crashed rf compared t ff. Parents seem to listen closely then.

I'm curious what numbers you use with that. Do you just make up a number for how many rearfacing kids out of 100 would be hurt?
 

Adventuredad

New member
Instead of percentages I use real numbers during 100 collisions. I don't randomly make numbers up.......... From research we already know how effective rf and ff is.
 

southpawboston

New member
this was discussed just a week ago in this thread:

http://www.car-seat.org/showthread.php?t=92755

500% = 5 fold = 5 times. they are all interchangeable

this is the study that jennifer mentioned above. i have it and can email it to anyone interested.

i *think* AD's logic is this:

if 100 kids crashed RF and 5 of them sustained serious injury or death, then if the exact same 100 crashes were repeated, but the kids were FF, 25 of them would have sustained serious injury or death. 25/5 = 5 = 500%

is that right AD?

keep in mind that this is over simplified, and AD's example actually overstates the benefit of RF. in reality, it depends on the crash. the 500% figure applies only to side impact crashes. i forgot what the number was for all types of crashes combined. interestingly, frontal crashes were not significantly different RF or FF. but when you combine all crashes together, the number is somewhere between 100% and 500%. again, i forget the number.
 

Stresch

New member
Right, my question is do you know how many kids are injured per 100 crashes?

I understand how stats work.

But saying if 100 rf kids were involved in crashes and 20 of them sustain serious injury, whereas ALL of them would have if they'd been ff, is probably overstating the case in that injury statistics aren't that high. And it totally ignores how likely it is that these crashes actually occur and the severity of them.
 

southpawboston

New member
Right, my question is do you know how many kids are injured per 100 crashes?

I understand how stats work.

sorry. i think those numbers are in the study. i'll check tonight, it's' on my home computer.

EDIT: did anyone here know that marilyn bull is a geneticist????? :love:
 

Stresch

New member
Gah, sorry for sounding so huffy about understanding stats. I know it's really confusing for a lot of people.

I did read the study and found it interesting. Of course I can't find it now.

Very cool that she is a genetist.
 

southpawboston

New member
reviving this thread to throw in some numbers that might be useful when explaining the benefits of RF to parents. these are from the 2007 henary et al article in injury prevention:

553% safer for side impact
23% safer for frontal impacts
76% safer on average, for all type of crashes combined


so it's probably more accurate to tell parents RFing is 76% safer overall, and mention that in side impacts, RFing has a whopping 553% benefit. but to just say that RFing is 500% safer is really not telling the whole truth.
 

wendytthomas

Admin - CPST Instructor
Staff member
reviving this thread to throw in some numbers that might be useful when explaining the benefits of RF to parents. these are from the 2007 henary et al article in injury prevention:

553% safer for side impact
23% safer for frontal impacts
76% safer on average, for all type of crashes combined


so it's probably more accurate to tell parents RFing is 76% safer overall, and mention that in side impacts, RFing has a whopping 553% benefit. but to just say that RFing is 500% safer is really not telling the whole truth.

Those are fantastic numbers to have, but you usually get once chance to tell parents how much safer it is, and they understand "five times safer/500%" very easily. If we start whipping out a whole bunch of statistics they're just going to zone out (parents in real world checks don't ask questions like parents here).

Wendy
 

southpawboston

New member
Those are fantastic numbers to have, but you usually get once chance to tell parents how much safer it is, and they understand "five times safer/500%" very easily.

my only issue with that is that it's not really accurate-- i am not a believer in bending the truth to make a point, even if it's an important point to make. the overall benefit is 76% in all accidents types, so you could tell parents that RFing is safer in all types of accidents (true), and close to twice that of FFing (true).
 

wendytthomas

Admin - CPST Instructor
Staff member
my only issue with that is that it's not really accurate-- i am not a believer in bending the truth to make a point, even if it's an important point to make. the overall benefit is 76% in all accidents types, so you could tell parents that RFing is safer in all types of accidents (true), and close to twice that of FFing (true).

It's not though. It'd be safer to FF in a serious rear collision. But as those account for 4% of collisions, it's safer to RF in the VAST majority of collisions.

However, your point is taken. I think decent wording to use with parents is that "studies have shown that in some collisions rear facing is 500% safer."

Wendy
 

bree

Car-Seat.Org Ambassador
I may be completely off-base here, but I remember reading the Injury Prevention article and one of the follow-up articles written about it, so I thought I'd toss in my :twocents:. I still think that the 5 times number does refer to all accidents, just not side impacts; however, it is specifically referring to children aged 12-23 months.

Marylin Bull and Dennis Durbin recommend that "Parents may be helped to understand the importance of using the convertible car safety seat in the rear-facing position longer than 1 year if they are counseled that children are 5 times safer than when riding in a forward-facing seat into the second year of life." They make no mention in their recommendation of the "5 times safer" referring only to side impacts. They noted earlier in the same article, "The odds of severe injury for forward-facing infants under 12 months of age were 1.79 times higher than for rear-facing infants; for children 12 to 23 months old, the odds were 5.32 times higher." (from http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/121/3/619) They cite the Injury Prevention article for the 5.32 number, and I think it is this number that has prompted the more recent recommendation of rear-facing until 2 instead of 1, like in the AAP newsletter article in April.

So, unless I am misinterpreting the data and statements made by Bull and Durbin (entirely possible - I haven't run a statistical analysis in years, so I'm rusty :D), I think it is accurate to use the 5 times number when talking about kids ages 12-23 months. Bull and Durbin want parents to be told that their 1 year olds are 5 times safer, but I don't see anything where they limited that to side impact crashes. The 5.53 number in the original article (553% mentioned above) does refer to side impacts only for all kids under 2, but based on the way Bull and Durbin discuss the 5.32 number in this article and the abstract of the study itself, I think the 5.32 number is a separate statistic referring to 12-23 month children in all accident types considered in the study.
 

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