She was with her young son, driving on a winding road, when a car crashed into her truck and caused her vehicle to roll over several times.

Despite the severity of the crash, Coughlin's 5-year-old son suffered not a single scratch. Just 15 minutes before the crash, little Braden was properly placed in his car seat by his mom.

"If Braden and I were not properly secured, we'd have been out the window and we wouldn't be here today," she said.

But Coughlin is a minority when it comes to using child safety seats the right way. A federal report found 80 percent of U.S. parents are not properly installing their children's seats.

Nicole Nasson, head of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, said, "It's an extraordinary problem. Anybody who has ever dumped a car seat out of a box ends up with an endless amount of straps and hooks and holds it all up and says, 'I don't know how to make this work.'"

Nasson said the NHTSA may soon require manufacturers to simplify the design of child safety seats. The administration is also considering setting a universal standard and design for all seats, and Nasson said the administration could soon require automakers to make child seat anchors more visible with larger labels for parents.

"It's still too difficult for parents to install their seats," she said. "We're all failing."

But some say fixing the seats still might not fix the problem. The laws themselves vary from state to state, which causes confusion for parents. Despite the differences, officials said the federal government cannot require all states to pass a universal law.

"Some people go from state to state and they don't know what the new policy is. They don't look into it," Coughlin said.

Amidst the confusion, only 10 percent of children ages 4 to 7 who should be using booster seats are actually in them.

Safety advocate Lorrie Walker said the burden is on parents to make sure their children are safe.

"We want parents to ask the hard question: Which product fits best in which car," Walker said.

To learn more about how to properly install child safety seats and avoid common mistakes, see the video links at the top of this page.