by Joyce Slaton posted in Products & Prizes

Kids like riding up front of the car, and after years of playing chauffeur with a back seat full of screaming, fighting siblings, parents are usually eager to have somebody in the passenger seat to navigate, pass the coffee, and work the radio.
But if your child is 12 or younger, resist the temptation to let her ride up front. Why" Because she's much less safe up there. Putting your child in the backseat instead reduces her risk of being killed in a crash by a third. Plus, the exact same air bags that are responsible for saving so many adult lives can put your child at serious risk.

Before puberty -- which happens at about age 13 -- a child's bones are still flexible and soft like a baby's. They just can't withstand the force of a rapidly inflating air bag, which can cause grievous, even fatal head, face, or neck injuries. Particularly risky: Allowing a child in a rear-facing seat to be buckled into a passenger seat with an air bag. In a collision, that ballooning air bag can hit the back of the seat with such force that it crushes the passenger between the infant seat and passenger seat, again, sometimes fatally.
Here's a (non-graphic) video that illustrates what can happen when children are too close to front or side air bags:

As the video states, some parents have a legitimate reason for needing to seat their child up front -- they drive a truck or another vehicle without a back seat, they don't have enough room in...