Children Becoming Too Big For Car Seats

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- If you want to drive with your family, you need to be very careful. Your child may weigh too much for his or her car seat.

Mantill Williams, the Director of Public Affairs for AAA, says, "If a child is in a seat that doesn't accommodate their weight, the seat could even collapse because it's not strong enough or the harness straps could actually rip out of the seat and that child could be ejected from the seat and be injured or possibly killed."

The Columbus Children's Research Institute found only a handful of car seats designed for children who weigh 40 to 65 pounds.

That means nearly 300,000 U.S. kids in that weight range are at risk.

"Children seem to be getting bigger, the car seats, the weight range for the seats haven't really changed, " said Lara Trifiletti from the Columbus Children's Research Institute.

The number of obese children is double what it was 30 years ago, meaning parents with bigger kids really need to be trading smaller car seats, for models that are larger but also more expensive.

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