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Partners for Child Passenger Safety (PCPS)

A Joint Venture Between Academe and Industry

In a unique collaboration between academic institutions and private industry, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania, and State Farm Insurance ® Companies joined forces in 1997 to form Partners for Child Passenger Safety (PCPS), with the goal of learning why motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death and disability in children over age one in the United States.

Today, PCPS is the world’s largest child-focused motor vehicle motor vehicle crash surveillance system, and its findings are recognized worldwide. PCPS applies the Center for Injury Research and Prevention’s interdisciplinary research-to-action-to-impact approach to studying injuries to from many perspectives to determine the most effective ways to improve child safety in motor vehicle crashes. This ongoing research initiative has published more than 50 papers in scientific journals and regularly shares its analyses with industry, regulators, policymakers, public health educators and the media — those best positioned to make motor vehicles safer for children.

Visit our interactive, bi-lingual website for parents, featuring 4 different videos about installing a car seat for children of all ages, as well as fact sheets, a child passenger safety technician locator, and other useful information at www.chop.edu/carseat.

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Methodology

Each day, the PCPS research team collects information, with privacy safeguards, from State Farm on nearly 200 children involved in crashes in 15 states and the District of Columbia. This claims information represents State Farm-insured children younger than age 16 involved in crashes in vehicles from model years 1990 to the present.

With policy-holder consent, information is forwarded electronically from State Farm headquarters to the research team at Children’s Hospital. Data is manually selected for on-site crash investigations and automatically selected for detailed telephone interviews. In-depth telephone interviews give researchers a comprehensive view of the range of crash and injury severity, while detailed crash investigations provide the research team with information to form hypotheses on mechanisms of injury to children in crashes.

As of Dec. 31, 2005, more than 455,000 State Farm customers had participated in the study. In all, the crashes represented in the study involve 669,000 children. The study includes more than 29,000 in-depth interviews and more than 800 crash investigations.

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Our Research in Action

One of the PCPS project’s first research findings was a demonstration of patterns of inappropriate restraint of children in motor-vehicle crashes. In 2000, researchers reported that the majority of children between 3 and 8 years of age were not restrained appropriately in child restraints and booster seats. They were prematurely “graduated” to vehicle seat belts. Soon after, PCPS demonstrated that children 2 to 5 years of age using vehicle seat belts were 3.5 times as likely to be injured in crashes as those in child restraints.

Promoting these findings stimulated a number of organizations to enhance their own promotion of age-appropriate restraint for young children, resulting in quick gains in booster-seat use. While patterns of injury associated with inappropriate use of seat belts by children had been previously documented, the nature of PCPS data describing new patterns of injury served to raise public awareness of the benefits of age-appropriate restraint.

This culminated in the first real-world demonstration of the incremental benefits of belt-positioning booster seats. It has supported the passage of upgrades in child restraint laws in most states and Washington, D.C., to require booster-seat use for children older than age 4.

Recent educational and legislative interventions have dramatically increased the number of children who now use child safety seats and booster seats. This PCPS line of research illustrates the research-to-action cycle that is at the center of every project our researchers undertake, from problem identification to demonstration of intervention effectiveness regarding age-appropriate restraint for children.

Between 1998 and 2005, booster seat use among 4- to 8-year-olds in the PCPS study population increased from 4 percent to 36 percent. Overall, child restraint system use for children younger than 8 years increased from 51 percent to 75 percent.

• Published Findings

  This ongoing research initiative has published more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, and our researchers frequently present their findings at medical, engineering, and automotive conferences worldwide.

• Education and Advocacy Tools

  We are constantly seeking new ways to develop helpful tools for advocates, educators, healthcare professionals, and legislators that are based on the latest research. Visit our library to download interactive videos, annual reports, state-by-state fact sheets, and more.

• Sources of Funding

  State Farm Insurance Companies ®