While buying cars, thinking about your toddler’s safety is a prerequisite. Children are curious about their surroundings and enjoy exploring. But as they are unaware of dangers, the results can be fatal. To minimize these harmful consequences, car manufacturers have come up with technologies to protect children.

Child safety lock is one such special-purpose feature, which are built into the cars to prevent children from opening the doors both during travel and when stationary. The child safety lock is built into the rear doors of most cars and engaged through a small switch on the edge of the door accessible when the door is open. Some cars use a different locking mechanism as a device which is turned with the vehicle key. This design helps prevent disabling of the lock by mistake.

Child lock is inaccessible to the passengers when the door is closed. The principle behind its functioning is that when the child lock is engaged, the interior handle becomes useless due to disconnection of the handle by latch mechanism, allowing complete movement of the handle but denying door release. This renders the passenger unable to open the door from inside and virtually “locked-in”. The passenger can only be released by lifting the outside handle.

The lock makes the children safe inside the car and doesn’t allow accidental or intentional opening of rear doors by them when in motion. Some vehicles also have window-locking mechanisms. They are safe but can get your child locked-in, since the door can only be opened from outside. However, they offer safety when the car is in motion. Also, you may not be able to open the rear door when the child safety lock is engaged. An additional concern is being unable to open the door in cases of emergency. This makes parents wary of enabling the feature. But the factor of safety for children makes the feature desirable.