Children´s safety in shopping carts. Assessment of parental behaviour that increase probability of accidents for toddlers

This study concerns children’s safety in grocery stores and investigates the frequency of adults placing their children in the basket portion of grocery carts during the shopping trip. Such behaviour is a threat to children’s safety as it increases the risk of a fall off the cart. It is estimated that 100 children per year are injured by falls from shopping carts in Iceland. The frequency of children standing on the outside of the cart was also assessed. The observations took place in two grocery stores and results show that these types of behaviours were fairly common in the larger store but less frequent in the smaller one, which in turn raises additional questions for future research on the subject