over a bloody booster seat 🥵

100% this.

My 9 year old daughter is over 1m35 but I still make her use a booster seat. Otherwise the seatbelt is uncomfortably close to her neck and should we be in a crash then it could result in serious damage.

Car safety just isn't worth compromising on.

My DD not even 150cm with 3 kids of her own and drives her own carwithout a booster seat

Jesus, I'm so glad I'm old and this stuff didn't exist when I was a child ...!

(However I do have a different risk appetite - motorbike rider; and so did my parents - I was a latchkey kid.

But then we were much closer to Chernobyl so also a different time, a different place...)

I’d also want her to use a booster. My dd had a similar trip at a similar age and used a booster, she was even smaller than your dd though. The kids were year below and none of them had booster but no one cared.

Not car seat manufacturers.

And where do you think the government gets it's money?

Car seats, yes. I'm getting a car seat for my baby when he's born in March.

Booster seats, not really, no. But I'll get one for when my baby outgrows his car seat because while I think they're dumb, I'm also a law-abiding citizen.

Awareness campaigns are not linked to manufacturers, if you actually look at the awareness campaigns you’ll see that where booster seats were concerned these were government funded and not affiliated to any seat manufacturer.

@YorkshireGoldDrinker do you not think car seats are necessary?

Well, yes, they do, for the advertisement makers and the booster seat manufacturers. It's capitalism 101. Someone pitches an idea, the budget needed is drawn up, the makers of the advertisements then get to work once they have money to start making something. Remembering that this is the public sector, there is no private finding, so who ponies up the dough? The taxpayer. There is a constant flow of taxpayer money, so just yoink some cash from the public purse.

"Oh, this hasn't increased booster seat sales. Nevermind. Let's get it legislated and force uptake instead."

They've pocketed the money to make the advertisements that did bugger all (which they likely knew in any case), then the booster seat makers have a got a cash boost from people being forced to buy them as a result of the booster seats being legislated.

Money is revenue to the person it ends up with.

Awareness campaigns cost money, they don’t create revenue.

"Awareness campaigns were tried first but usage stayed low so the decision was made to legislate."

Lol yep, the state got it's way as it always does. Why go to the effort of campaigning when you can just force it into law anytime you like? They made a tidy profit from the awareness campaigns, though, I bet.

I'd be iffy about either of mine going on an hours car journey with someone else's parents anyway, especially with a load of rowdy kids on the backseat serving as a distraction. My 10 year old is on the borderline of 135 but she would 100% be in her booster seat and she definitely wouldn't be arguing about it. I'm not strict about much, but car seats are absolutely non negotiable.

This is not true at all. Road deaths have reduced massively since the 90s. In 1990 it was about 5,000 deaths per year, by the end of the 90s this had reduced to about 3500, today it's more like 1700.

There are also about 60% fewer car accidents today, although that isn't affected by whether or not you use a booster seat. It's more likely to do with better road design, more stringent driving tests and modern safety features in cars e.g. ABS and some of the autonomous features in newer cars. And probably also better enforcement of speed limits/less drunk driving.

You probably hadn't heard of them until the 90s because they weren't really invented until then. The backless booster was around in the early 80s but didn't make much sense until seatbelts were more common in the back seats anyway. The early high backs were not much good, we didn't really get modern ones until later in the 90s and then it started to be clear they did help older children. Awareness campaigns were tried first but usage stayed low so the decision was made to legislate.

Haha I’m glad you’ve written this! I haven’t read every post but I can’t believe that the OP is being told she’s a terrible Mum for wanting to ensure her child lives in the event of a car crash. .

There are more accidents and fatalities on the road today than before the booster seat became a requirement. I never had a booster seat and neither did my husband when we were growing up. We'd never heard of them until somewhere in the 1990s, possibly even the early 2000s and we laughed then as much as we do now. The legislation hasn't made things any safer, it's created a nation of neurotic parents too afraid to really do anything for fear that somehow their children will die as a result of being a centimetre below the threshold at which the state insists on them using a booster seat.

I remember when the first gatso camera was put into operational use, 1992 I think. That slowly created a generation of neurotic drivers constantly staring at their speedometers to ensure they didn't go even half a mph over, so instead they'd end up rear-ending someone in front of them, or going through a nasty pothole, or more ironically, hitting someone!

Of course with everything new, it evolves, so now we have variable speed speed cameras installed on overhead gantries. It has nothing to do with safety, but it is an easy way for the state to take some money off you and slap some points on your licence, ultimately making you feel like a terrible driver. It also gives the courts something to do if a speeding infraction is challenged.

You cannot regulate anything into functioning well, if at all existing in the first place. Child safety is one of the easiest things for the state to go after.

Of course I am. But look at the amount of people that think safety is such a low priority when it comes to car seats.

If my comment makes one person rethink then it’s helped. I just can’t understand how people justify putting their children’s life at risk.

Maybe,but the number of people on this thread who belittle others for insisting the legal minimum standards are met (which appears to be far lower in the UK than elsewhere) is staggering!
They seem to care more about being the cool parent than the safety of their child.....

Come on, now.
It's comments like yours that make people so defensive about car seats.
I'm very pro rear-facing (my oldest was rear-facing until 6 and my youngest is still rear-facing at 5) but I think you're being intentionally provocative to claim that people who don't do this "hate" their children 🙄

All these people that hate their children!!!

My daughter (3) will rear face until about 6. Maybe younger as she is tall but her car seat rear faces until 125cm / 36kg whichever comes first. She will then be in a high a backed booster. 150cm or 12.

I care about my child not dying if she was in a car accident.

This