Child passenger safety and the immunity fallacy: Why what we are doing is not working

Motivating parents to take certain safety precautions when traveling with their children remains an elusive challenge for advocates, as caregiver naiveté contributes to poor parental participation in safety-seat checks, low booster-seat use, poor adherence to rear-seat positioning, and intermittent safety-belt use. Because of inherent human biases and unfortunate characteristics of vehicle travel, it is argued that most caregivers possess an immunity fallacy, or a reduced perception of risk for motor vehicle injury to their children. Consequently, traditionally designed child passenger safety campaigns, which are primarily informational, fail to have an impact on most parents. Rather, for maximum behavioral success, injury prevention messages must shock and surprise parents into paying attention to something they would normally dismiss as unimportant.