Feds Urge Parents To Make Tweens Buckle Up

It’s hard to get tweens to buckle up so the federal Department of Transportation (DOT) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) are trying to do something about it. Citing alarming statistics of tweens (ages 8 to 14) who were killed because they weren’t wearing a seat belt, DOT and NHTSA announced a new campaign called “Never Give Up Until They Buckle Up.”

Parents who would never dream of bringing their newborn home from the hospital without a proper car seat and who taught their toddlers that the car wouldn’t start until everyone was buckled in seem to give up on tweens. With the rush-rush lifestyle of many families and so many short trips to school, practice and the store, it sometimes seems too much of a hassle to fight the seat belt fight with tweens.

Tweens are entering that age where they are starting to feel grown up. They’re experimenting with limits and testing the rules. They often feel like they’re too old for seat belts and, in order to show their independence, don’t bother to buckle up. That can be a deadly mistake.

According to NHTSA, “Over the past 5 years, 1,552 kids ages 8-14 were not wearing seat belts when they died in a crash, and one in four of those kids were age 14. That’s a trend that has to stop now.”

Among other important information, the Never Give Up Until They Buckle Up website has information for parents on:

• When Is My Child Ready for an Adult Seat Belt?; and
• Tips to Motivate Your Tweens to Buckle Up

The tween years are the time when it’s more important than ever to stress how important the rules are if tweens want to live long enough to become teens.

Read more: Don’t Give Up Until They Buckle Up