to want not want to fork out 350 quid for a rear facing toddler seat

[chairmanofthebored]

I have looked at the scare mongering youtube videos about the dangers of internal decapitation, resulting from car crashes where the toddler was in a standard forward facing care seat. I then did a quick bit of research into the cost of the recommended rear facing seats. IT turns out they are bulky, difficult to fit in smaller cars, and also around the 350 quid mark.
Does anyone know of one that might be a bit cheaper? I am in danger of being either an over protective parent or a skinflint and I have to decide which!

[IneedAsockamnesty]

zippey you brought a second hand car seat via gumtree from a compleate stranger and complained about it costing £40

do you really belive anybody is going to pay attention to anything you say about car seats?

[maddening]

Out rf seat is higher than the ff seat in dh car - all ds gets is a view of the sky and the back of a seat whereas in my car he is high up so can see out of the window and the back window - as it's a zafira he gets a fab view

[filetheflightoffancy]

We paid about 220 for ours (a Recaro Polaric) so you dont have to fork out massive money. For me, once I had heard about rear facing car seats I just kept thinking that if we had a crash and the worst happened to DS in a FF seat, I would always be thinking 'what if....'.

However, when you look at the statistics rationally the risks really are tiny. There are child death comparisons on the Rearfacing.co.uk webiste between Sweden and the UK, but they dont really mean much because Sweden is so different from the UK in many ways, most notably population. The vast vast majority of children who are seriously injured or killed in car accidents are not properly restrained at all.

I do find that some people on Mumsnet are a bit righteous about it and have talked about 'giving a lecture' when people ask about their RF seat If people have asked us about it, I just mumble something about it being safer, but certainly dont go on about it.

[IneedAsockamnesty]

forgive me for asking (im unsure ) ive looked on a website with several rf ones but a few said use rf till 2 years then ff.

i thought they were surposed to be rf untill about 4 years old?

[sugarice]

Think of £350 divided by the amount of days the seat is to be used by your child.

Money well spent!

[Redbindy]

Assess the risk properly, then spend the money taking your child out or on presents. The adverts are just scaremongering. If you believed them you would have to wonder why there are any adults on the planet.

[cerealqueen]

This article is interesting and Which? generally know what they are talking about

here

[GotMyGoat]

Erm.. I spent £25 on a car seat from asda [awaits flaming] , it says it will last till dd is 7. we can use that rear facing as long as we can squeeze her legs in. You don't have to spend a fortune to be rear facing.

we don't actually have a car, so we will use a car maybe tops 10 times in a year, we felt it wasn't really necessary for us to spend a lot of money on a car seat because of this, though we drew the line at second hand, turned down a free offer as was too scared it would be damaged.

[SlanketySlank]

The Britax Two way Elite was 200 quid when I bought one almost 2 years ago. It rear faces from 9-18kgs (approx 4 years of age) and forward faces up to 25kgs so we'll get lots of use out of it and DS2 will use it too. It was a huge expense for us but we felt it necessary.
DS1 was a very long skinny baby and outgrew his infant carseat length ways at 8 months (head was over the top of the seat) but he only weighed 7.8kg so was under the minimum weight for a FF seat. This is what made us look for extended rear facing seats. He was still below the minimum weight for the Two Way but we couldn't afford the isofix seats and the other cheaper ERF seats didn't fit our car. The woman who fitted it said it was safer to put him in the Two Way than in a forward facing seat.
How old is your child? When DS2 came along we got a Britax first class plus, it was £100, its not an extended rear facing seat but because it's bigger than an infant carrier DS2 shouldn't outgrow it rear facing before he reaches 13kg which will probably be somewhere between 18 months - 2 yrs old, then after that its forward facing until 18kg, its a cheaper option if you can't afford an extended rear facing seat but want to keep your child rear facing for a bit longer than an infant seat allows.

[nocake]

Why would you put your child's safety aside, zippey?

[AnAirOfHalloween]

My only complaint is in a rf seat when driving at night or in winter the bright lights of the car behind shin on the child and stops the child from sleeping.

How can i stop this from happening?

[Fishwife1949]

I only spent £150 on my travel system and pur car only cost £1000 so there is no way we could afford a car seat for 400 and you cant even re sell it to recoup some of the money


If you dont have it you dont have it

[MoonlightandRoses]

Agree with the others who say do a risk assessment before deciding which type of seat to buy. We have the IziCombi BeSafe IsoFiX - fits in our Sorento, PIL's Verson and DM's Micra no problem and is easy to transfer between the three.

We decided on RF as we do a fair amount of motorway / dual-carriageway driving and there are also a number of roads around the general area where people tend to 'shoot' out of side-roads. So for us, it made sense.

The 'five times safer' figure refers to head-on or side-on collisions - which have higher fatalities as they tend to occur at higher speeds. It does not refer to where you may be rear-ended (typically happens at lower speeds).

[MoonlightandRoses]

Oops - that'd be 'Verso'

[3monkeys3]

I'm not a statistician, but have read plenty about rear facing seats before deciding to get one - I think plenty of people have answered on my behalf on this thread (thank you) and the info is freely available if you google.

I agree that you have to weigh up the risks of your own situation - we live fairly rurally and I have to drive along winding, national speed limit, country roads pretty much no matter where I go, so rear facing made a lot of sense. If I only really pootled around town it probably wouldn't be so important to me.

[MigGril]

when looking for independent info on car seats I first looked at which. But had big issues with them. They only test seats in one make of car, which actually makes there test a bit useless as every car is different and one seat that gets a great ratting in the car they test may not fit your car properly and be quit useless.


Fitting any car seat is important and it's why I think they should all be sold and fitted by independent specialist not baby product retailers. A high percentage of car seats aren't fitted correctly, which is why we had ours fitted as well. Means we've been shown by the experts how to fit it correctly.


For those of you buying second hand seats you need to know car seats have a life span most only last 10 years at most some less. It doesn't seem to be well known in the UK but all US seats have an expiry date on them, as plastic breaks down over time. So I'd be careful of buying seats that you don't know the age of our how they have been stored.

[filetheflightoffancy]

I am a bit [hhm] about the whole 'expiry date' on car seats - I have seen expiry dates closer to 5 years, for example on maxi cosi infant carriers. Ok, if you have used a car seat non stop for 10 years and left it in the sun every day for those 10 years then yes, the plastic will have deteriorated.

However, many seats, particualrly the infant carriers, are used for much shorter periods of time that that and spend the rest of the time in a cool dark cupboard. And what about the group 1,2,3 car seats, surely they are supposed to be used for a lot longer than 5 years - what is the point of buying one if you cant use it for its purpose?

I have never seen any independent research about car seat plastic deterioration and think that it is probably a bt of a money making scam.

[IneedAsockamnesty]

file. i had a infant car seat in my loft have no idea why i put it in there in the first place but after a 12 year gap when i went back up there to see what i had saved from dc i thought would be the last. i brought it downstairs slipped on the last few steps and dropped it not very hard but it cracked im so glad i was taking it to the bin as opposed to thinking of using it.

as in a accident it would have been less usefull than a teabag

[DuelingFanjo]

yanbu but beware, there are lots of people who will tell your priorities are all wrong if you can't magic up £200+. they will tell you that you don't care for the safety of your child.

[BonnieBeaumont]

We purchased the Recaro Polaric recently for £205. Money well spent!

[youngblowfish]

Our local Mothercare just started stocking rf carseats for older children. With the help of a discount and a gift card, we paid a little over £200 for the iZi BeSafe Kid X3, without Isofix (old car).

[pigletmania]

My dd is 5 and she had ff seat from 14 months, ds is 8 months old so we are using all her seats for him. I don't see the point in getting rear facing carseat, we only do 2 motorway journeys a year, rest is local, even then it's once a week. Really I agree with others, it's a wonder there are still adults alive, it's a relative isent it

[DoodleAlley]

OP if you cant afford it then you can't afford it. There are plenty of places children get injured - including in the home. You will probably get a slightly polarised perspective on this thread because inherently most people who comment - whilst not necessarily being anything other than well intentioned - will naturally be the people who have placed this priority particularly highly.

That's not to say that what they have to say isn't absolutely valid and relevant but won't show you a cross section of society to show you that buying a ff seat is also a perfectly normal choice.

Out of interest I've never seen a rear facing one above the usual infant ones and so wondered where on earth their legs go once they get older and longer? DS was super long and already started to look uncomfortable by the time to moving to forward facing?

[bagofholly]

Loving the "but kids find ff more interesting" argument! My 3 year old prefers to sit in the driving seat but obviously we keep this to a minimum, no motorways etc!

Honestly!

[DoodleAlley]

Btw according to the speed awareness course I went on recently I was shocked to learn that statistically motorways are the safest roads. Or at least you are least likely to have an accident on one. Obviously if you do the repurcussions are far worse but the statistics surprised me