Kids love to explore the world around them - including the inside of the car! With their spring back mechanism, unbuckled seat belts look like fun toys for babies, toddlers, and even school-aged kids. The danger is they have a history of becoming tangled around a child’s body, neck, or limbs causing preventable injury. 

To help keep kids from playing with seat belts, make sure any seat belts near a child are buckled in so they can’t play with them during the drive. This includes seat belts on vehicle seats where a car seat is installed with LATCH! If you used LATCH to install your car seat, be sure to also buckle in the seat belt so it’s out of your child’s reach.

Want to add extra safety? Lock the seat belt after you’ve buckled it in! Here’s a step by step guide for how to lock your vehicle seat belt:

1. After you buckle the seat belt, pull the shoulder belt out very slowly from the retractor (this is where the shoulder belt comes out of the vehicle)
2. Keep pulling the seat belt out slowly until you hear a click or a pause. This tells you that you’ve reached the end of the seat belt
3. Feed a few inches of the seat belt back into the retractor. If you hear lots of tiny clicking sounds, the seat belt is in locking mode! Feed more of the belt into the retractor until your child cannot reach it.

Keep those unused seat belts buckled in and locked to help keep curious kids safe!

Guest Post written by Britney Schroeder, CPST from Buckle & Latch (@buckleandlatch)