Stevens Point Personal Injury Lawyer

The LATCH System

The LATCH system is a new system for securing a child safety seat to a car. It stands for lower Anchors and Tethers for Children.

It is a system that allows a baby seat, either rear or front facing, to be secured to a vehicle without using the car’s safety or seat belts. In order for this system to work, both the vehicle and the child restraint must have their correct components of the LATCH system for the system to work properly. The car must have hooks in the back seat for the anchors and hook, as well as a package shelf, behind the rear seat for the tether.

The anchors, which secure the lower portion of a safety seat, attach to hooks in the seat itself. The tether connects the top of a front-facing safety seat to the back of the car via a hook on the package shelf. The tether has been shown to reduce the movement of a child’s head in a front-facing seat by as much as 8” in studies conducted by Consumer Reports.

Some people feel that there is a difference in the safety of one system over the other. This is not true. What is true is that properly installing a baby seat is easier with the latch system than the seatbelt system. Unfortunately, the majority of vehicles with the LATCH system do not allow the seat to be placed in the center of the rear seat. This is a problem as it has been shown that the center of the rear seat is the safest place for a child to be.

If your baby has been injured in a car accident, contact the Stevens Point personal injury lawyers of Habush, Habush, & Rottier, S.C. 1-800-248-0171 to discuss your case and to schedule an initial consultation.