Keep your family safe on the road with the 2020 Volkswagen Jetta
This week is Passenger Safety Week, which is meant to help spread awareness around vehicle safety and educating parents on how to best keep their kids safe while on the road. It’s important to know that car crashes are a leading cause of death for children. From 2013 to 2017, there were 3,313 children under 13 killed while riding in passenger vehicles — 2017 was the first yearly decrease since 2014. Many of these feathers were preventable since 37% of those children killed in 2017 were not buckled at all.One of the easiest ways to keep your child safe is to properly use car seats and boosters. When installed correctly, car seats can reduce the risk of fatal injury in a crash by 71% for infants and by 54% for toddlers. Unfortunately, many parents install their child seats incorrectly. Make sure to follow proper instructions when installing your car seat. It’s also critical that all car seats are registered with their manufacturers in case of a safety recall. A registration card that you can drop in the mail comes with every seat purchased. You can also register your seat online at the manufacturer's site. This simple, but critical, the step will help ensure that you will be notified if a defect is discovered with your car seat so it can be repaired or the seat can be replaced to keep your child safe.As your children grow, they will have to transition from one type of car seat to another. The NHTSA recommends keeping children rear-facing as long as possible. This is the best way to keep them safe. Once they have outgrown the rear-facing seat they are read to travel in the forward-facing car seat. The next step is a booster seat before then transitioning to wearing an adult seat belt alone. Make sure everyone in the car is properly buckled every time your family gets on the road. Another way to keep your child safe is to select a car with high safety ratings. You may not have seen it atop any family-car lists lately, but the Jetta has a family-friendly secret that’s about to get out: The backseat is big. It’s bigger than every other compact sedan on the market (in terms of rear legroom), and it’s big enough that it doesn’t feel like a small sedan at all. It even fits rear-facing child-safety seats comfortably, and adult co-pilots don’t feel cramped with their knees in the dash when riding shotgun, either.The 2019 Jetta has been awarded an overall rating of “5 stars” by the NHTSA after intensive testing. As expected, it becomes one of the very few cars to bag the maximum ratings for safety in its segment. Volkswagen has added many new features in the Jetta pertaining to comfort and safety this year. Like any other vehicle from VW’s stable, the Jetta has also been injected with the German genes, which also translates to rugged build quality than most of its competitors lack. Moreover, it has been loaded with a plethora of advanced safety features to ensure the safety of its occupants. With many class-leading features such as Intelligent Crash Response System (ICRS), Automatic Post-Collision Braking System, Electronic Stability Control (ECS), and Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS), the 2020 Jetta elevates this segment to a different level.Consider upgrading your family car to one that has exceptional safety ratings such as the 2020 Jetta. Also, make sure to educate yourself and your family on the proper ways to use car seats and when to transition your children to booster seats and so on. Help us spread the message during Child Passenger Safety Week that correct car seat and booster seat use are the keys to keeping children as safe as possible. Let’s work together to keep America’s kids safe. Stop by Esserman International Volkswagen anytime to learn more about our vehicles and their impressive safety ratings.