In our Facebook group we are happy to help you with all your car seat enquiries
We will advise on which seats are most suitable for your family and your car, we can explain the differences between the weight groups and regulations, advise you if you're not sure when your seat is outgrown, and much more.
But there is one thing we won't do...
When you come to us because you would like us to help you choose a new car seat for your child, we will never recommend any forward facing ones, either with a five-point harness or an impact shield. We have a duty of care to ensure that the advice that we give is the best, safest advice possible, and we know that in a forward facing seat a child under the age of five is five times more likely to be seriously injured or killed in a crash than in a rear facing one. Rear facing car seats offer young necks and spines the best possible protection and they save lives.
When you choose a car seat in a store or online, the only guidelines given are the weights and heights that the seats are suitable for. Say you have a 10kg one year-old or a 90cm two year-old. There will be a range of car seats available that your child fits into, some will be rear facing and some will be forward facing. Most of the time the very important safety benefits of rear facing are completely ignored and the options are presented as if they are a matter of personal preference. But they are not.
A baby's head accounts for 25% of its body weight, while an adult's head is only 6% of the total weight. This heavy head combined with a soft immature spine means that in a forward facing car seat the head will be thrown forward with great force while the torso is held back by the seat's harness. This can cause life changing or fatal injuries to the neck and spine. In a rear facing car seat the head, neck and spine are cradled by the back of the car seat which reduces the risk of serious injury or death from 40% to just 8% compared to a forward facing seat.
We will advise on which seats are most suitable for your family and your car, we can explain the differences between the weight groups and regulations, advise you if you're not sure when your seat is outgrown, and much more.
But there is one thing we won't do...
When you come to us because you would like us to help you choose a new car seat for your child, we will never recommend any forward facing ones, either with a five-point harness or an impact shield. We have a duty of care to ensure that the advice that we give is the best, safest advice possible, and we know that in a forward facing seat a child under the age of five is five times more likely to be seriously injured or killed in a crash than in a rear facing one. Rear facing car seats offer young necks and spines the best possible protection and they save lives.
When you choose a car seat in a store or online, the only guidelines given are the weights and heights that the seats are suitable for. Say you have a 10kg one year-old or a 90cm two year-old. There will be a range of car seats available that your child fits into, some will be rear facing and some will be forward facing. Most of the time the very important safety benefits of rear facing are completely ignored and the options are presented as if they are a matter of personal preference. But they are not.
A baby's head accounts for 25% of its body weight, while an adult's head is only 6% of the total weight. This heavy head combined with a soft immature spine means that in a forward facing car seat the head will be thrown forward with great force while the torso is held back by the seat's harness. This can cause life changing or fatal injuries to the neck and spine. In a rear facing car seat the head, neck and spine are cradled by the back of the car seat which reduces the risk of serious injury or death from 40% to just 8% compared to a forward facing seat.
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These stills taken from a crash test video show what happens in a forward facing seat on the left compared to a rear facing one on the right.
Children's bones are very soft, it takes at least 15 years for the human skeleton to fully mature. The 24 vertebrae in a child's neck and spine begin to fuse together somewhere between the ages of two and three, and it takes three years for them to form solid protective rings around the spinal cord. The skeleton develops at roughly the same rate in all children no matter how big they are, so a bigger baby or toddler is no safer in a forward facing seat than a small one of the same age.
Since 1965 all Swedish children have been travelling rear facing in the car until they are at least four years old, and the results speak for themselves. Here in the UK more than 200 children are seriously injured in car accidents every year and a further 20 on average are killed. On Sweden's roads deaths and serious injuries in young children have been virtually eliminated.
We believe that all children should rear face until they are at least four, but preferably six years old, and then move straight into a high back booster and never face forward in a five-point harness at all.
We believe that all children should rear face until they are at least four, but preferably six years old, and then move straight into a high back booster and never face forward in a five-point harness at all.
But what about their legs?
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More and more rear facing car seats are becoming available in our stores, but they are still relatively new and a lot of people have never come across them before, so we get a lot of questions about them. Most of them are about the children's legs. How do they fit, isn't it uncomfortable, surely they'll break in an accident?
Some extended rear facing car seats (ERF for short) have a legroom gap, but even if they don't this isn't an issue. Children are happy to sit with their legs crossed or bent, this is a natural position for them and is not uncomfortable. You often hear parents of rear facing children say that broken legs are better than a broken neck. After all, broken legs can be fixed. But there are no known cases of rear facing children breaking their legs because of the way their seat was facing. It is however quite a common injury in forward facing car crash victims. |
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Other concerns that people have are about the child not being able to see out of the window, the parent and child not being able to see each other, worries that putting them in the seat will be more difficult, that they will get car sick etc. If you have never seen a rear facing car seat before, they may look unusual and you might think that these things are going to be a problem. The reality is that children have a much better view out of the rear and side windows, and in a forward facing seat they can't actually see as much. You can still chat to each other and there are mirrors available if you want to keep and eye on them. Getting them into a rear facing seat is actually easier than a forward facing one, and car sickness is no more likely than in a forward facing seat. |
If forward facing seats weren't safe, surely they wouldn't sell them?
All car seats sold in Europe have to pass the ECE R44/04 tests. One part of these tests is to place a crash test dummy in a car seat, on a crash testing sled. A bar is placed 55cm from the back of the seat and the 'car' is crashed at 30mph. If the dummy stays in the seat and its head does not hit the bar, the seat passes the test. But that test doesn't measure the loads on the child's neck.
In Sweden they use an additional test called the Plus Test. It is carried out by the VTI (Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute) and uses a different type of dummy that does measure the loads on the neck. Those loads are measured in Newton and need to be below 1300 for the child to avoid injury. All forward facing seats tested, measured neck loads between 1500 and 4500! Whereas all rear facing seats showed neck loads below 1000. So the reason that it is considered safe to put a 9kg baby in a forward facing seat in the UK and many other countries, is simply that the tests that those seats pass do not show how dangerous they really are.
But things are changing. There are now lots of car seats available in the UK that rear face up to 18kg (about four) and there are currently nine that go up to 25kg (approximately six). The new i-Size regulation states that all children must rear face until they are at least 15 months old. And while this is still nowhere near old enough, and doesn't compare with the Swedish seats that go up to 25kg, it is a small step in the right direction.
All car seats sold in Europe have to pass the ECE R44/04 tests. One part of these tests is to place a crash test dummy in a car seat, on a crash testing sled. A bar is placed 55cm from the back of the seat and the 'car' is crashed at 30mph. If the dummy stays in the seat and its head does not hit the bar, the seat passes the test. But that test doesn't measure the loads on the child's neck.
In Sweden they use an additional test called the Plus Test. It is carried out by the VTI (Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute) and uses a different type of dummy that does measure the loads on the neck. Those loads are measured in Newton and need to be below 1300 for the child to avoid injury. All forward facing seats tested, measured neck loads between 1500 and 4500! Whereas all rear facing seats showed neck loads below 1000. So the reason that it is considered safe to put a 9kg baby in a forward facing seat in the UK and many other countries, is simply that the tests that those seats pass do not show how dangerous they really are.
But things are changing. There are now lots of car seats available in the UK that rear face up to 18kg (about four) and there are currently nine that go up to 25kg (approximately six). The new i-Size regulation states that all children must rear face until they are at least 15 months old. And while this is still nowhere near old enough, and doesn't compare with the Swedish seats that go up to 25kg, it is a small step in the right direction.
