Shopping Cart Safety
September 10th, 2008 by Evan Oswald 
We’ve all seen it, a mom with a rambunctious little one in the shopping cart waiting for any chance to stand up in her seat and reach for that cereal box while mom’s not looking. Or little Mikey jumping around in the shopping basket while big brother hangs on the side of the cart pulling it onto two wheels. What you hopefully haven’t seen is what comes next.
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Every year, According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), over 24,000 shopping cart related injuries are reported by emergency rooms, “the most frequent cause is a fall from a shopping cart, with injury caused by a cart tip-over being second.” What makes this even scarier is that 75% of these injuries are to the head or neck of the child. Even with parents close by, serious injury can be caused from a fall from as little as 3 feet above the ground in as little at 2.5 seconds (the time it takes for a child to stand up in the shopping cart seat)
Good Morning America featured a piece on keeping children safe in shopping carts in which they referenced two measures parents and retailers could take to ensure child safety in carts. The first was to ensure that child restraints are available and used in carts and secondly it is recommended that parents and retailers use “carts with safer designs that allow children to ride closer to the ground – for example, in a small model car in front of the cart.”