59 000 preschool children marched backwards!

Yesterday, 3th of May, the Child Safety Day were held in Sweden for the tenth year in a row. Child Safety Day is an initiative of NTF and Volvia organized in Sweden with the purpose to draw attention to the importance of children traveling in rear-facing car seats and spreading knowledge about child safety in a car. Something we at Axkid support and advocate to travel rear-facing for as long as possible.

On this day, this year, Nearly 59 000 preschool children across the country in Sweden have walked the traditional backwards march for their right to sit rear-facing in the car. This is a new record during the 10 years that the backwards march has been conducted.

In conjunction with the Swedish Child Safety Day, Volvia released their annual nationwide survey, which shows that although Sweden is at the forefront of child safety in cars, there is insufficient knowledge of the subject and that 19% of the children aged 2-3 years and 11 months are still forward-facing.

Facts about rear-facing:

• Different studies based on actual accidents show that rear-facing car seats are 5 times safer compared to forward-facing car seats.
• The rear-facing car seat is a Swedish innovation
• A nine-month-old baby has 25% of their body weight in their head, compared to an adult that has 6% of their body weight in the head.
• The safety and protection effect is 90-95% in a rear-facing car seat, compared to 60-70% in a forward-facing car seat.

Source: Volvia, NTF och Folksam