To think you get what you pay for with car seats?

[KenAdams]

Stemming from the recent Which article regarding the Nania Trio Plus and the Kiddicare Maxi SP.

It makes me a bit when people spend hundreds on first birthday presents and parties but only £25 on a car seat. Surely if you can afford a car you can afford a car seat?

There's a Volvo one in the Don't Buys ffs!

Lt

That just says that for straps to be blue or red and must be placed in a certain way.. And that to meet standard the child must not fly further than a certain point.. It is the basics...

Basically seat... Straps in certain places... Certain type of buckle... The distance is a red herring on the fact I don't want my carseat flying anywhere anyway...

The more side protection etc the better cheap car seats don't offer this the more expensive ones when looked into offer better protection...

Hell as someone said above there is a car seat being sold that in a certain crash would chop the child's head off!!
That's not safe yet it passed the safety standard..

We need higher Safety standards which some other country's have ours are crap!

Besafe are releasing a new extended rear facer later this year, the retail price will be £299. That seems a lot but it is suitable from 6 months to 6 years, so splitting the cost over 6 years, it works out reasonably.

I do wish there were cheaper ERF seats out there though, so that more parents would have the option.

YANBU when many people I know spend nearing a 4 figure sum on things like nursery furniture and travel systems (all extensively researched) only to nip out to Mothercare and buy a really crap Group 1 car seat with seemingly no thought whatsoever when their child is 1.

We're not well off by any means, 2nd hand cot, clothes etc but we did get a RF Besafe seat for DD which will last until she's 4+ and will then be used by DC2 as well. We put all of her 1st birthday money towards it and feel it was money well spent for sure.

Its not necessarily 'you get what you pay for' but some thought/research is definately required. Not all car seats on the market are the same safety wise despite a widespread misconception that they're all fine and you can't go wrong.

I agree that the Safety Requirements should be reviewed.

After a lot of research we have a Swedish rear-facing seat (9-25Kg) and I was just reading this on their website:

"he Plus test is an additional test that is conducted on seats for the Swedish market. All seats that pass the Plus test are ECE R44 approved for installation on all seats in the car. The Plus test ensures that your child is not exposed to high, life threatening neck forces in a frontal collision.

The Plus test measures the forces that a baby's neck is exposed to in a frontal collision. This form of testing is not done in other European countries and is not included in the ECE approval."

The minimum tests are pretty low:

1 frontal impact at 32mph

1 rear impact at 18mph

NO side impact test and no rollover test

More info on why some seats cost more than others on this fab blog

I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about Miaow - I think every single person who made that point was pretty clear. In fact, here's what I said up thread:

"Obviously some people can't afford to pay for expensive car seats, but I agree with the OP - if you have some available cash to spend on DCs kit it should go towards their safety first."

There's no assumption being made about people's disposable income; the statements were "if you have money to spend on children's kit/apparel, I'd spend it on safety". Operative word being "if".

I do agree with you on one thing, it is getting progressively hard to debate anything on this site because every bloody thread has to come with 2000 disclaimers and even that isn't enough because people choose to misinterpret them!

So if you have money, then you should buy the more expensive car seat because it is safer.

But if you don't have money, and can only afford the cheapest car seat.... then what?

Are you a bad parent?
Is your child less important to you?

We have the disposable cash - or rather could make it available. But my DS still has a £50 seat. We don't own a car, he has been on a motorway once in his entire 2.5 years (the main benefits of RF are in high speed collisions). I am not spending £300 on something a) likely to be fitted incorrectly by GPs and B) used once a month or so.

Still I cycled throughout two pregnancies, ride daily in central London with DS1 and will soon be putting newborn DD in the trailer with him (ironically in her MN approved Maxi-Cosi Cabriofix albeit secondhand) so according to MN I should pretty much be reported to SS immediately for neglect

Luckily I am confident in my abilities to perform risk assessments for my own children without being told what I "should" be doing by internet randoms.

Miaow the OP is about parents who do have money for all sorts of things, but then baulk at spending more than about £80 on a car seat.

The truth is the minimum standards are pretty crap but lots of parents don't realise. They assume that because the car seat is on sale in the UK it must have had to pass rigorous safety tests.

As did I fwiw until I happened to be thinking of changing our seat and came across some of this info.

FFS if you don't have the money you obviously can't buy it. Self evident truth.

If you don't own a car and don't ride cars, you probably don't need one.

If you live at the top of a mountain and ski everywhere you probably don't need one either.

Next there will be someone coming on this thread to say the OP is BU because this poster has no children and therefore shouldn't have to buy a car seat.

I don't know if it's my pregnancy hormones but people are just fucking difficult sometimes.

My mum has the nania one in her car for my daughter probably gets used once a month, it does the job and it has to be safe or they can't sell it. Some cars aren't as safe as others they still sell them. There are basic safety standards for everything. Count yourselves lucky we have some of the highest safety standards in the world for manufacture

This

«it has to be safe or they can't sell it...... Count yourselves lucky we have some of the highest safety standards in the world for manufacture»

Is exactly the misconception I mean.

1. There are car seats being sold which are not safe

1. We do not have high safety testing standards in this country

What I don't understand is having read Which best buys none of them seem to be ERF.
So is it better to get a best buy FF or a non best buy ERF?

In an ideal world I would love to have the safest possible seats for my DC but the reality is we can't justify paying £500+ for two ERF (if we could find two that fitted next to each other in the car) as well as another £400+ for seats that will fit in Grandparents cars when the children only go in the car 5-6 times a month if that.
Both sets of GP's have bought cheap seats for their cars, in both cases it was either cheap seats or ancient second hand seats.

Have encountered two lots of simpering bloody smuggery about this recently,
"oh, we rear face it's sooo much safer, didn't you know?"
"I don't know how anyone can bear to put their child forward facing anymore, it really is awful" said loudly as I strap DS into his forward facing seat!
Both culprits had one child in a massive cars.

notso, that's really rude - are these people your friends?

I agree, RF seats are extortionate and I don't understand why; surely they can't be much more expensive to manufacture?

Poppy thankfully no. The first one is a mum from toddler group, she's ok in small doses just a bit boasty.
The second one was a braying loon at a local children's attraction. She spent the whole time cutting queues and announcing "he's just so intelligent it makes him impatient" as her son stood picking his nose and eating it

Which have always been biased against ERF seats, ever since DS1 was a baby and the Britax first class was pretty much the only option. They argue that seats are harder to fit correctly, rear facing, which is true if you're relying on the seatbelt alone. I'm not sure what their reasoning is, now that so many cars have isofix as standard (and I've noticed that some now have top tethers, too, which add extra stability to such seats)

Poppy you've clarified what I meant so much better than I could. Obviously, if you can't afford it, you don't have an option to spend more on one that has a higher crash test rating. I'm talking about people who do have the money because they have bought something else with it.

I don't think Which test ERF at all and they say why, I'll go and find it in a minute.

not everyone can afford a sum like £300+ all in one go sadly. I wish that everyone could but very many families can't. At least they are buying a car-seat, period.

All the information in the world about different car-seats isn't going to help a poor family to buy an expensive car-seat.

I personally fully support any campaign to make car-seats cheaper so that more people can have more choice but it makes me wince when I see people accusing others of not thinking about their childs safety because they 'won't' buy a particular kind of seat.

gets off soapbox

Rubbish. thats what they want you to think. They are all safety tested to relevant standards, what they are selling you is the false comfort of thinking that if you spend 350£ instead of 75£ you are a better parent and your children will be fine. neither of which is true.
Half of the 300£+ ones aren't fitted properly anyway, meaning you might as well not bother.

I tried to buy a rear facing seat.

Manufacturer of seat sold a fixing kit for my car make, model, year range of manufacture.

The retailer said it Should fit my car.

The retailer spent 45 minutes or so, trying to get it to fit my car.

It did not fit.

ISOFix - rubbish in my view, it isn't totally universal, sometimes thing just don't fit. Fault of the car manufacturer, fault of the product manufacturer, just some weird reason to do with the way the seat cushion is fitted, who knows... end of the day, the seat would not fit.

So even if you try to fit an expensive seat which attaches to the chassis of the car, there is no guarantee that it will fit. Thus never buy online, always get it fitted by the retailer - so you don't get billed until it's fitted.

To pass British Standards, seats are tested up to 30mph. This, in my opinion is totally unacceptable. Even in built up cities, 30mph really is not an average daily speed. Most roads used now are 40/50/60+mph.

Its like rating a cooker based solely on the hob. But with lives.

British Standards? That was a long time ago.They have to pass european standards, and the tests are far more thorough.
80% of seats are incorrectly fitted or don't fit the car. People should spend more time making sure the seat they have is being used properly rather than how much it cost. It's a false sense of security.