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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To want to be able to buy a Group 2 car seat with harness for my son?

30 replies

bubbleymummy · 14/09/2010 21:23

4 just seems too young to be secured by an adult seatbelt when 5 point harnesses are so much safer for children. There are seats available with harnesses in the US but the only one I could find in the UK is a Britax seat for children with special needs and it costs over £450. :(

I'm so frustrated.

OP posts:
CrispyTheCrisp · 14/09/2010 21:26

It depends on weight not age. You can buy seats which have 5pt harnesses which are suitable up to age 12. However, over 18kg and an adult belt is safer then the 5pt harnesses, hence why they all change over at that weight

TonariNoTotoro · 14/09/2010 21:29

Over about 3yo/18kg the 3pt seatbelt is just as safe as a 5 point harness. Someone will be along with a link soon, I'm sure.

IwishIwasmoreorganised · 14/09/2010 21:32

I've got a 2.3 year old who nearly weighs 18kg.

He still comfortably fits in his Britax seat that has a 5 point harness, but I can't find anything other than a rearward facing seat with a 5 point belt that is safe for 18+ kgs. They cost about £250 and we would need 2 - so it's out of the question.

YANBU. If you find a solution, please pass it on!

thisisyesterday · 14/09/2010 21:35

depends on the weight OP. if your child is still under 18kg he will be fine in something like the britax evolva 1-2-3 (in the harness)

otherwise how about this?

shown rear-facing, but it can be used forward facing too, up to 25kg with the harness

Original poster
bubbleymummy · 14/09/2010 21:38

I'd be interested to see anything that shows that the seatbelt is safer than the harness because from the crash test videos I've been watching that certainly doesn't seem to be the case!

I know there are group 1-2-3 seats with the harness but they all recommend removing the harness at age 4 (18kgs) but this seems to be because on these particular seats the harness is only designed for up to that weight so then the seatbelt becomes the safer option- but only on that particular seat. Obviously it is possible to design harnesses that are suitable for heavier weights. ( racing car drivers being an extreme example here) So why don't they?

OP posts:
TonariNoTotoro · 14/09/2010 21:43

I can't find the link, but as long as the seat is fixed in properly (and there isn't sideways pressure on the seatbelt buckle, which might cause it to open in the event of a crash) it's apparently just as safe once they get over 18kg.

If someone could find the info I'd be very interested to re-read it.

cheeseytoastie · 14/09/2010 21:55

I think it must be the seat rather than the harness that's at 'fault' here, although all seats are probably the same. Racing car harnesses are secured into the chassis much like an isofix seat, normal car seats probably can't withstand the force of >18kgs in a harness, I imagine they'd just break apart. The American ones must be a strong material hence the price.

Not a solution, sorry.

thisisyesterday · 14/09/2010 22:09

no, britax make them u[ to 25kg with a harness. they just don't distribute them in this country. they do in many other european countries tho (apparently no demand over here!)

so do BeSafe, Dorel (maxi cosi) and various others.

there are places in the UK that you can buy these seats, but they are expensive as they have to be imported

tokyonambu · 14/09/2010 22:18

"I'd be interested to see anything that shows that the seatbelt is safer than the harness because from the crash test videos I've been watching that certainly doesn't seem to be the case! "

There's no evidence that for children over three child seats make any difference. The reason why forward facing seats aren't safe for children younger than that is the risk to their neck and upper spine in an impact, and a five point harness doesn't make any difference to that (in fact, arguably it makes it worse). Five and six point harnesses are used in competition vehicles to deal with submarining risks that simply don't exist in road cars (because you are sat, rather than lying, in the seat).

EgyptVanGogh · 14/09/2010 22:25

What do I do about my 5 year old DC, who is still just 16 kilos, but has outgrown his 5-pt Maxi-Cosi Priori-Fix?

Do I bite the bullet and get a booster, or carry on when he is so tall? (sorry for hijack)

navyeyelasH · 14/09/2010 22:32

I had this problem (with a 2.5 year old) and bought this

Original poster
bubbleymummy · 14/09/2010 22:35

Thanks thisisyesterday. I had read that the rearward facing seats aren't as safe forward facing though Confused. It was the US Britax seats that I had seen. Apparently one of them is very similar to the Britax Traveller seat over here which is targetted at children with special needs up to age 11. Why don't they just give us the option if they are already making seats like that anyway?

Tokyo do you have any sources showing that there's no difference? I know that rearward is safer up to age 4 but the harness at least reduces the risk of there being a seatbelt malfunction or the child coming out of the seatbelt (as shown in some of the crash test videos) and also provides a larger area to distribute the weight surely?

OP posts:
TonariNoTotoro · 14/09/2010 22:36

Egypt, your 5yo is 16 kg?

You can get high backed boosters with harnesses that may be tall enough for a 5yo? Is he tall and slim?

TheLadyEvenstar · 14/09/2010 22:38

There is a piccy on my profile of DS2 in his car seat. I know it didn't cost the earth but it is a great seat.

TonariNoTotoro · 14/09/2010 22:38

seatbelt malfunctions often happen with carseats when not properly installed, when there is pressure against the side of the buckle it can 'snap' open in an impact :(

The buckle needs to be upright against the side of the seat, not at an angle and pressured in any way.

seeyoukay · 14/09/2010 22:38

Why not get a 5 point seat belt made for adults (or at least teenagers).

You could go the whole hog and fit bucket seats roll cage and a fire extinguisher!

krldt0710 · 14/09/2010 22:47

I have the same car seat for my DS as TheLadyEvenstar. DS is admittedly tiny (he will be 3 in november and is only just starting to grow out of 18-24 month clothes), but he fits this one fine and it should last a while. I didn't want to spend a lot on a car seat when a cheaper one will still do the job fine. I also made sure I bought one with a 5 point harness after seeing an awful youtube video about what happens in crashes with a 3 point harness. I wasn't prepared to risk it.

TheLadyEvenstar · 14/09/2010 23:01

krldt0710, wanna swap DS's??
DS2 is in 4-5yr old clothes and a 10g in shoes Sad...where has my baby gone?

MumNWLondon · 14/09/2010 23:01

Just buy a stage 1,2,3 car seat like this and this and keep the harness on.

Don't really see the problem though my DS is in a really good stage 2 seat and the adult seatbelt fits fine - a bit like this :

Original poster
bubbleymummy · 14/09/2010 23:07

Navyeyelash,
TheLadyE and krld - thank you. They look like possibilities. DS is still ok weightwise with the Priorifix (just over 15.4 kg) but his height is creeping up. It's good to see taller seats available with harnesses out there. Something like that might work fine because at this rate it will be a while before he reaches 18kg anyway :) I would prefer isofix though..... I might be getting too fussy now! :)

krldt, we may have seen the same videos. V scary :(

Tonari, it was more the child coming out of the seatbelt rather than the carseat coming loose iykwim. In so many of the videos, the child slid sideways out of the diagonal seatbelt on impact so they were basically just left with the lapbelt as a restraint. With the five point harness the force of the impact was more evenly distributed and the child was contained more in the seat.

OP posts:
Original poster
bubbleymummy · 14/09/2010 23:16

MumNW. The harnesses in the 1-2-3 seats are only suitable up to 18kgs although as I just said, this might be a possibility because the extra height is really what we need for DS1. Have you looked at crash test videos of the booster seats? Although the belts seem to be correctly positioned, the dummy gets thrown around a lot and can even slide out of the diagonal part of the belt. It has really scared me. We looked at the Cybex Solution x-fix and tge britax kidfix because they both were Which best buys but when you watch the crash videos the dummies still get thrown around and/or come out of the belt. The Cybex seat in particular did not look good. :(

OP posts:
EgyptVanGogh · 14/09/2010 23:28

Tonari, DS is fairly tall and very thin. He has certainly outgrown the height of his Priori-Fix.

tokyonambu · 14/09/2010 23:34

If the videos you refer to are , I'm not entirely convinced. I have a suspicion that you, and the poster of the videos, think that the correct behaviour for someone restrained in a road car is for them to remain fixed in their seat during an accident. The reality is that in a high-energy accident (and that looks like a high-energy accident slowed down, although it's a bit naughty to have no scale on the images) you want the accident to go on for as long as possible, and if that's at the expense of moving forward under the control of the belt, so much the better.

You don't die of your arms and legs flailing around. You do die of your neck being broken (which is why rear facing seats are absolutely essential for small children) and your internal organs and brain banging against your ribs and your skull. You reduce that risk by stopping as slowly as possible, as far forward as possible without hitting anything hard. The stretch and movement in the belts, which are often interpreted as "bad", are in fact what's saving your life. An infinitely strong seatbelt which held you exactly in place would be far more dangerous, because rather than having the collapsing of the crumple zones and the stretch in the belts, you would stop stone dead (figuratively and, given some speed, literally) as soon as the crumple zones were used up.

This stuff has been measured, in detail, as part of competition car homologation. The regulations now give maximum g-values for the chest and head areas, which require very careful engineering of the belts to provide enough stretch (Mika Hakkinen hit his head on the wheel in the 1990s, but had he not done so, he would have taken a massive g force and probably died). Competition drivers are now mostly wearing HANS devices to stop their heads from moving, so the need to protect their necks is less, but there is a lot of a dynamic movement in the seatbelts to prevent internal injuries. Simply watching crash-test images isn't going to help if you're being upset by limbs flying around: that's not the key issue.

TonariNoTotoro · 14/09/2010 23:55

thank you for the explanation Tokyo - now you've said about the give on the seatbelts it makes a lot more sense.

DS will be giong into a high backed booster soonish (he's still only 14kg though, but tall for his car seat), so these threads are so useful, thank you