To not understand the way some people's perception of risk (specifically cars), especially in the UK.

[honeytea]

A couple of recent threads have made me wonder why some things are seen as very dangerous and to be avoided and some things are seen as acceptable even if statistics show they are infact dangerous.

There are so many health and safety rules about everything in the uk, warnings about swimming in lakes and rivers, the schools have huge fences and locked gates, people are warned not to share their bed with their babies but it is still acceptable to put children in forward facing car seats from a very young age.

I live in Sweden, here kids and adults swim in the lake, school groups swim in the lake, the schools are very open, no fences, their playgrounds are often the local park, new mums are encouraged to share their beds with their babies but the huge majority use rf car seats.

the child death rate due to accedents is lower in Sweden despite the lack of safty rules.

AIBU to think that the focus is on the wrong things?

Maybe in Sweden RF is more important due to the very different climate and landscape making different types of collision more common.

The most common type of collision is head on into a moose*, which is comparable with driving straight into a brick wall.

*or other large life form.

Well I have 3 children from 8 to nearly 2 so I cannot imagine them being comfortable with their legs stuck up in the air for 3 hours so yes I think they are impractical compared to f f.

neun my daughter is four and her legs aren't stuck in the air. Nothing impractical about it.

www.securatot.co.uk/articles.php?category_id=5&page=1

Quite a few photo's here, no legs in the air!

I've worked all over the world and the UK is obsessed with 'health and safety'. the only place worse it's the USA.

I've just come back from Thailand where it's not uncommon to see an entire family (mum, dad & 2 kids) riding one motor bike. zebra crossings are purely for decorations only.

A modicum of health and safety is sensible but we have seemingly gone too far.

I agree with neun as well. I also decided to look at the stats myself - ff is fine for many, many families. Sitting in the back, in a correctly fitted, correct stage carseat IS safe. It might not be the safest possible option, but it IS safe.

Looking at those stats made me far more vigilant about children wearing cycle helmets, using reins and road safety as a pedestrian though.

I personally feel more comfortable once my children are ff (though I always keep them in their baby seats for as long as possible) because I am partially deaf and rely on seeing their faces to understand them.

Indeed they do niceguy, and if we had the Thai's devil-may-care approach we would kill somewhere between 8 and 30 thousand people a year (depending on whether we went up to their per capita road deaths or their per kilometre driven death rates). If we drove like the Italians then we'd only kill about two thousand a year.

I'm all in favour of taking a robust approach to some things and not using the safest possible rf car seat on a British road is not a huge issue in the grand scheme of things, but all the little incremental paranoias add up to the UK and Sweden having the safest roads in the world, and save thousands of lives every year - it's the equivalent of having found a cure for breast cancer (or one of the other big four cancers).

Oh and the good old days when cars didn't have all these modern conveniences and safety features so you kept your eyes on the road and drove more carefully? 8,000 road deaths in 1965, 2,000 today. I know that some risks are worth taking in the interests of a happier life, but 6,000 bereavements every single year is a hell of a lot to have eliminated.

(Oh I didn't make it clear - the Thai/Italian road deaths figures would be additional to our existing 2,000.

I want to move to Sweden.

I don't see where kids can put their legs in a rear facing seat when all the seats in my car face forward and the link doesn't work

DS2 is in a BeSafe Izi Combi . He is 4 now and it still fits him fine. He has no problems with where to put his legs - there is a space between his seat and the car seat so his legs just hang down in the same way as they would with a FF seat. We have been on very long journeys with no comfort issues at all. He can see plenty out of the windows too.

I think the main issue is people not knowing about them although obviously some people have some strange ideas about RF too so I think it will be a while before they are widely used.

Power of three - here's another link for you

Scroll down to bottom image.

This shows the girl with his legs hanging down. Sometime children choose to pull their legs up or put them on the seat...Ds1 does this in his FF seat sometimes too.

Rf car seats are going to be the thing that the children of today have a go at us about as adults when they have children I reckon.

Even though it's been proven to be five times safer, you'll still get the die hard grandparents who'll insist that it didn't do, you any harm...and so the cycle continues!

I hadn't heard of extended rearfacing until after I bought our car seats, now we can't afford to it as we had two babies close together.

Ahh it all becomes clear, thanks Bumbley mummy, what age is it recommended up to?

'And I find posts that exist solely to criticise the risk assessments /judgements of parents smug and irritating tbh.'

Yep. What she said. ^^

And when people qualify their judgments with 'someone I know has ten holidays a year, designer clothes and a sports car but clearly doesn't give two shits about their child dying in a mangled car wreck '

Many people in the uk cannot afford o buy a rf carseat.

I agree niceguy s risk assessment seems rather dodgy! There is no way I would let any if my family on a motorbike in such circumstances!

However, looking at the stats - in 2011 there were 60 under 15s killed a year on British roads. 33 of those were pedestrians, 6 were cyclists and 21 were car occupants. Obviously those 21 are tragic but I find it hard to believe that very many can be attributed to not having a rearfacing car seat.

Power of 3 - up to 18kgs so the same as the group 1 seats like the maxi cosi priorifix etc.

We have the Britax Multi Tech II which is 9-25 kg (9 months - 6 years).

So can I just turn my maxi cosi group 1-3 around or does it not work like that?

What seat have you got?

The only year I can find statistics for directly correlating UK with Sweden is 2006/7 where Sweden has no deaths (only measured for under 6's) UK has 21 for under 16 - this therefore in itself is a skewed statistic but also shows that the 'risks' compared with numbers of car journeys taken by kids in the UK is still extremely low.
(Sweden doesn't give figures for injuries but UK gives 205 for that year)
This is often solely attributed to car seats but actually different regulations for driving and car safety in Sweden which have an impact (lights being the most obvious, different speed limits based on the quality of the road, winter tires)
Swedish car accident statistics are the lowest in the world so you are much less likely to have a crash there in the first place so it's very hard to compare.

And Kineck if you moved 2 kids in beside her what would happen then, family saloon b t w.

We all judge risks differently and what's ok for one family isn't for another. I know I do things which would be deemed an unacceptable risk to others (and have been previously told that on Mn!).

Interestingly, as an aside, the law on car seats and very old cars applies differently.

If a car has never had seatbelts (like the one we own) children can ride unrestrained in the back from the age of 3. Over 12 they can ride unrestrained in the front. So no car seat needed at all.

well op my teen dd was belted into a school coach travelling home from a ski trip. The driver fell asleep and the coach left the motorway. one death and multiple injuries.

my dds belt snapped and her head went through the window while her body was trapped under her seat.

it doesn't matter a bugger what car seat you use just make sure you crash with good insurance.