The Hurphy Durphy Seat Belt Buckle Guard is a child safety device designed to prevent the accidental release of the seat belt buckle anchoring a capsule or infant seat.
Inquisitive children are often responsible for unfastening the seat belt buckle keeping a child restraint in place. However, adults can also accidentally do this when they are departing the vehicle. Even shopping bags placed on the back seat can cause the buckle to disengage. Once this occurs, the child restraint becomes unanchored, creating a very dangerous situation for the child.
The Hurphy Durphy eliminates the risk of this happening.
The Hurphy Durphy is a life-saving product.
All parents want to keep their children safe in the car. So it’s frightening to learn that, according to the 2006 Australasian Road Safety Research, Policing and Education Conference, for every five injuries sustained by children in motor vehicle accidents, two are the direct result of incorrectly fitted child restraints. Statistics from the same conference reported than an incorrectly restrained child is seven times more likely to sustain life-threatening injuries than those restrained properly. Alarmingly, it has been documented that around the world, over 70 per cent of child restraints are incorrectly installed.
Seat belt buckles act as anchor points for child restraints. In most cases, a rear-located anchor point is securely mounted and latched in, while the second anchor point is a seat belt buckle. If this buckle is undone and an accident occurs, the combined weight of the child and the restraint creates a catapult effect, with potentially catastrophic results.
“It is crucial to protect the seat belt buckle when it is acting as a child seat anchor,” says Australian paediatrician Lindsay Adams. “Since there are only two anchor points securing a restraint to the car, if one is undone this significantly reduces the performance of that restraint in an accident.”
