Hello Lotta Jakobsson - host of the upcoming SAFER Child safety seminar
Hello Lotta! You are one of the most knowledgeable in child safety in cars in the world and is hosting the child safety seminar Child occupant protection, latest knowledge and future opportunities in September. We like to know more about the upcoming event!
What do you hope to achieve with the seminar? We want to create a dialogue between all different experts, researchers and users involved in child safety in cars.
Who is the target group? We want to reach out to everyone who works with child occupant protection today, this involves researchers in biomechanics and user behavior, those working with safety system development, rulemaking as well as consumer information and interaction etc. In addition, we want to attract those who are focusing on future transportations to join this event providing important input to the future needs.
I see you have managed to gather child safety experts from all around the world to the conference, is the engagement for this research area strong globally? Yes, the presenters represent different parts of the world, as well as different areas of expertise. This is global area, and we gain from learning from each other.
Do you think the child restraints will evolve in the future? How? The basic principles of protection are the same, however the context is changing by the increasing degree of automated vehicles and shared transportation (car pools, taxis etc). These changes call for a different evolution of child restraints than the direction today, which is moving towards bigger and more complex restraints. We believe that we need to turn this evolution around, which can only be done with joined efforts over the different disciplines.
Are there any differences working with protection of children compared to protection of adults in car accidents? How? Children have specific biomechanical needs in the way they can safely be restrained in the car. A three point safety belt designed for an adult is not enough for the child. The youngest children need their own seat, traveling rearward facing, while the older children need adaption to the adult restraints. In addition, it is essential to understand and address both the child’s and care-giver’s perception and acceptance to be able to enable real protection in real traffic.
If you have to choose on single measure to help reduce the number of injured children in cars, what would that be? The measure is restraining, every time and for the needs of the size of the child. Therefore, our main challenge is to make it easy-to-use and accessible. Therefore, all the different categories of experts and users need to meet together to develop this together.
Thank you Lotta and good luck with the event, we look forward to learn more!
