About second hand car seats?

[Pandora2016]

All of the guidance seems to state emphatically that you should not buy a second hand car seat. Which seems logical to me.

Yet there are loads of them for sale????

If buying a second one is so terrible, shouldn't this be banned? Exactly who is buying them anyway?

Iggi, maybe you sold it to me?

Unfortunately not everyone has the money to buy the £400 car seat. It is that simple for most people.

We don't drive and go in someone's car a handful of times a year.

I can't afford big expensive car seats but I won't buy second hand either.

I will buy them both a new seat (dc 2 needs one now he has outgrown his infant seat) but it would only be about £50-£60.

Surely shops can't sell them if they arnt safe?

Thanks diddly. I glad someone understands. It's not that we love our children any less, or worry any less about their safety.

Here's a scenario:

You don't have a car. Your children don't go anywhere they can't get to by bus. A friend offers to take you to a wonderful venue that you know your kids will love, and is really educational. You don't have a car seat for her car.

Do you;

A) not go, so that your kids miss this opportunity?
B) buy a good quality 2nd hand seat from people you get a really good vibe from?
C) fork out for a basic new seat, but send the kids to school in shoes that don't fit because you've spent their shoe money.

I chose B.

Common sense plays a part. We have always prioritised decent quality seats. Not because I think they are massively safer than cheaper ones but for comfort, convenience etc. I have passed them in for free to friends because they are sturdily built and have never been in an impact. I would never buy a seat from someone unknown

Drives me mad.

I am that nutter that comments to staff in a charity shop that please can they destroy the car seats they are flogging? also my local Freecycle page let's people give them away. I cannot believe it is allowed.

I have given one to a friend. She knows its history and that it's never been in an accident.
I'm not sure I use one from someone I didn't know.
I think it would be possible to see any major defects or if it looked very old or worn and a second hand one is better than not one at all.

As PP have said, some people simply can't afford to buy new car seats. It's not against the law to buy a secondhand one; maybe you would you prefer they stick their kid in a box in the boot?
If you are happy to pass one on then you surely understand this and shouldn't condescend to people who need them.

How would they police it? I know that charity shops and second hand stores usually don't take them. But you can't stop private sellers selling something unless it's really bad, like drugs/body parts etc. A second hand car seat is not in the same league as drugs and body parts. So it's not likely that legislation to ban private sales would come up.

Besides, it's okay to use a second hand car seat if you know its history, like if it's come from a friend or family member for example.

I'd also be happier with a second hand seat from a decent manufacturer if I trusted the seller than using one of the nania/babystart seats. They are made as cheaply as possible and only just meet the minimum of safety standards.

As decent brands but cheap new seats go, I'd currently buy:

Baby seat - Mothercare Ziba for £35 (they price match in store) or Joie Juva (same price at Halfords)
Toddler seat - Maxi Cosi Priori XP, £50 at Halfords or Britax Prince for £55 (amazon)
High backed booster - Joie Trillo for £25 at Halfords or Britax Adventure, £35 on Amazon.

Combined baby/toddler seat: Britax First Class £100 (but seems pointless since the baby + toddler ones separately are cheaper. But if you want to rearface to 13kg without the height/3 point harness issue.)

Extended rear facing seat: Joie Stages, about £150 on amazon.

Would not touch unknown brands without reading some good crash test results. A decent seat doesn't have to be expensive.

All this business about not knowing whether the car seats have been damaged when you receive them makes me wonder about the quality of car seats in the first place.

Either they are tough enough to cope with an accident (and therefore they are safe for my child) or they break unnoticeably and therefore they are not. Someone took my wing mirror off as we were driving recently. Do I need to replace my car seat now? Can I get it checked out? If whoever it is that checks my seat can recognise the problem with my newly purchased seat, how come they can't if I got it from eBay?

What? All car seat manufacturers recommend replacing car seats after an accident They are designed to protect a child IN an accident. Not to be used and then carried on being used after a crash.

Your seat that you sit on in the car isn't the part that protects you, it's the seatbelt. Seatbelts are harder to damage than child car seats.

Oh you mean the child car seats I think. No you don't need them checked or replaced after a wing mirror accident - that's being a bit facetious. After something like a shunt or a low speed crash, you should replace them even if they don't look visibly damaged, that's all it means (and what some people may not realise).

Same advice for bicycle helmets, by the way.

They are designed to absorb the shock of an impact. Once they've done that, the plastic and other materials will become weakened. So next time they experience an impact they might not protect in the same way.

the amount of perfectly good seats that get chucked to landfill for no good reason is probably sickening.

^^ This

Another thing to consider is carseats have a lifespan regardless of if they have been in an accident or not or how much they have been used. The average life span is 6 years from date of manufacture. Most seats will have either a date of manufacture or expiry on their seats.

I think it is because the plastic used becomes more brittle over time, or the components also degrade, and is less effective. So even if the car seat has stayed in your own family and you know its history it might not be safe.

No, there is no expiry date on European car seats. That's North American advice which often incorrectly gets stated here because of the nature of the internet.

But even with no expiry date, they must have a lifespan of some kind. I won't be putting my seats in the attic for any potential grandkids!

I think the expiry date thing is confusing.
Britax for example have a lot of information about the reasons why they expire on the Britax.ca site but nothing (that I could find) on the Britax.uk site. I assume the materials used are not massively different if at all so surely the expiry would be relevant here too.

UK climate is very different though

If they have an expiry date printed on them and this is referenced in the manual that is fair, but as a general policy European seats don't expire.

It is definitely good practice to update older seats but that's more because safety features and standards and testing will have moved on. For example it's no longer legal to sell car seats which comply with R44.03 as this is an older version of the legislation, r44.04 came out in 2005/06. Until i-size was released it was legal to sell seats complying with R44.03 but not r44.02 or older - meaning seats designed from some time in the late 90s.

It is a shame that this is just a facebook post because the information in this post is sound.

www.facebook.com/RearFacingToddlers/posts/659445497532636:0

I have an unused maxicosi plus isofix base for 0-6 months which I was going to sell or freecycle (DF bought us a fancy one when DD was 1 week old so it's technically been used once, to bring her home from hospital). It's only 6 months old, so I think that's probably ok and a bargain for someone.

If it were well used or a few years old, I would scrap it to be safe.

I think this is interesting, too (from a US car seat forum discussing this question)

"I am only speculating, but perhaps in the UK and Europe it is most common for one family to hang on to the same seat for that entire 10 year period. It may not be the newest technology but at least they know the history of it. Here in Canada and the US yard sales and thrift shop sales of used seats are all too common. Most times it's not that a family can't afford a new seat, it's that they choose to go for the cheaper option. One family will buy an infant seat new, use it for 6 months and then plop it out on the porch for 2 months before listing it on Craiglist. The next family uses it for 6 months and then passes it on. You get the idea. By the time that the seat reaches its 6 year expiry there could have easily been 10 different families using it. How can we guarantee that it has been treated properly, not left in the sun, not left in the snow, harness straps not washed improperly, not dropped from a plane, not crashed, etc? If it was one family using that seat for 10 years, and that was the normal situation, then our manufacturers may look at revising their guidelines. Who knows? Our social situation here seems to require a different set of rules though. Just a (very long) thought, but it's a complete guess."

flingingmelon and others wondering how a car seat could be damaged but not appear so - this is a useful series I was looking for the other day but couldn't find to post.

www.goodeggcarsafety.com/blog/category/second-hand-child-car-seats/