To make a PSA about extended rear facing car seats

[purplemonstermunch]

and link to this page for more information?

www.securatot.co.uk/car-seat-useful-links

And to ask those in the know to offer up any other useful information they have about the importance of extended rear facing?

The P&C supermarket parking space threads attract hundreds of comments; this thread could actually save children's lives...so could I also ask you to give it a bump if you don't have further information that could help?

Thank you

I think the moral of this story, much like with parenting generally, is that you have to do what is right for you based on your individual circumstance.

For me all the statistics are far to one sided they focus far too much on one type of impact. I liked being able to see him, especially if he was making strange noises, etc.

Holly it's just that it's actually designed for toddlers rather than the high backed boosters which are aimed more at infant school children/older preschoolers. DS had one and next to the high backed booster it was physically smaller so it kept him more closely contained. Obviously the HBB you have is miles better than nothing, though.

visualise in the eyes of the law you dont need a car seat in a taxi. They are no safer than any other car on the road and it cant come easy enough to ban babies and toddlers going seat free in a taxi.

I have never and will never take my dd unrestrained in any car until she is old/heavy enough to warrant a standard seatbelt.

I once drove next to a woman sat in the passenger seat with her baby in a sling. Fucking idiot.

Just as an aside, not all ERF seats are Isofix. Some ERF seats can be installed in cars without isofix and with compartments in the floor.

cant come soon enough

Besafe have a new seat out, the Izi Pro, and it is rear facing up to 25kg. It uses seat belts rather than isofix, and is a bit cheaper than their other seats. £300 is still a lot of money, but it lasts from 6 months to 5 years, so good value per year.

Oh, I agree - I think it very odd that you don't need a carseat in a taxi. But, I presume the issue is that a taxi driver would need to carry something that could suit from birth to the height of 4'10" (is that right?), which would be difficult. I'm sure it won't be long until the law changes though. Again though...buses. Why don't you need a carseat on a bus, or on a train?

I'll confess to being a 'fucking idiot' though - I have carried my boy in a sling while in a taxi. I made sure the belt went between us, rather than around him, does that make sense? I thought that in case of a crash, this was a better option, as I felt that if I was just holding him he could fly out of my arms.

I don't get the ire on threads like this. I didn't know about FF seats until I read about them on here, and am very happy that I did. Having read up on them, I bought one for DC2 as a result.

And arf at the person upthread who said 'I don't intend to have an accident'. Why bother wearing seatbelts at all then? Since presumably all those poor souls who die or are seriously injured in crashes must have set out that morning thinking 'oh you know what, I think I might crash the car today'

Gah, I mean RF seats!

Well buses and trains don't have seatbelts so it would be a bit difficult to fit them! When travelling on a coach, modern ones have special seats with car seats built in for 9 months + and they almost always provide booster seats even in the older models. We travel on a coach quite regularly with DS.

The taxi issue is because if you are stuck unexpectedly it's unlikely you'll have a car seat on you. In Australia you have to have one but taxis don't carry them (take up too much boot space) and I have heard of people being stranded because taxi drivers refuse to take them.

Baby in sling over seatbelt is better than baby in your arms but bear in mind that any object, including people, in a crash will effectively increase in mass meaning that they feel incredibly heavy. Slings are designed to carry/hold babies of normal baby weight perhaps up to a toddler and so they are unpredictable in a crash because it's quite likely that they will be dealing with a mass which is a huge increase of this. Even if the material holds them and doesn't rip, the stitching and buckles may not.

Plus the fact that the impact is forwards rather than down, they are designed to hold the baby in against gravity - you would only wear them when standing upright, even when you lean over most people's instinct leads them to hold the baby in. If you imagine dangling stomach-down off a cliff or a bridge, held by a harness, with the baby in a sling on your front, and then suddenly dropping and the harness stopping you (but it being a sudden stop) imagine that - it's about the closest you can get to the forces while easily being able to imagine it. You can also see the rationale for never having two people in the same seatbelt, especially when one person is a LOT heavier than the other.

You'd possibly be OK with a fabric sling in the first instance (most woven wrap slings are strong enough to be used as hammocks for multiple adults), but the second not necessarily unless their shoulders were also tucked in. Also bear in mind that if the baby's head and neck are not supported but the rest of their body is, this could cause the head to snap back suddenly which could presumably be fatal.

I suppose as well with buses and trains that it's an issue of time - if the driver had to wait every time until every parent getting on at the stop had got their (possibly multiple) children out of coats and into car seats, and the straps adjusted, and possibly had to deal with tantrums, they'd never get anywhere. Currently a bus or train will stop for perhaps 1 minute. To add an extra 5 minutes or so to every stop would make a journey with frequent stops take much longer and it would be a timetabling nightmare.

The other point is as well that trains and buses are much less likely to crash than cars, and because buses are so much bigger and tend to drive at slower speeds the force of an accident is different, they take much longer to stop and hence less force is applied to the passengers.

I think with buses (im.sure I read somewhere) that the results in a crash would be much different to a car. For instance, rarely would a bus crash into a bigger,.heavier vehicle so the force against it wouldnt be massive. The size of the bus and the fact that they rarely travel at high speeds all.work.in.its favpur safety wise.

I choose the rearward seats in trains as I beleive it is a safer way to travel. However I imagone at the speeds they go, a serious enough accident would probably be fatal regardless of seating arrangements.

We have a belted RF seat. Britax May-way. Got it from an online shop in Sweden as the one in Milton Keynes doesn't let you buy online - you have to purchase it in store. I don't remember why but the Elite II was not suitable for my car

They will deliver and you can buy online if you phone them first and tell them what car it's for.

And I think they have 3 shops now dotted around the uk.

I thought there was a study done recently in the states that showed rf was safer in all but one type of accident can't remember exactly the one that was not but think is was reversing into things at speed.(but its possible ive imagined that much the same as the day I woke up convinced Gary Barlow had married me)

I use Erf seats because one of my relatives works in a crash test centre and told me about a few of the tests.

I don't know, statistics from train crashes seem to be pretty good - there are always a large number of fatalities but generally the majority of passengers manage to escape.

The middle carriages are the safest, as the front and back ones are most likely to roll over if the train becomes derailed.

Trains rarely crash - we have multiple accidents on the road every day.

Yet another reason to feel shit about being poor.