To buy a bog standard car seat...

[Lalalax3]

... for (huge) 20 mth old son? I got a £40 Halfords essentials job and am feeling deeply guilty that we don't have a £300 extended rear facing thing like a lot of DS's contemporaries do.

He doesn't want to rear face - HATES it, and I really couldn't see how a £150 Britax was any safer than the one I chose.

So AIBU? Do I take it back and buy something better? Surely they're all as safe as each other, right?!

This is horrifying. WHY would you put a child in a rear facing seat?

Because it's safer, and it's proven to be safer. Why would it give them a headache?
We had a minor accident a couple of months after we got our first rear facing seat, all of us had whiplash except DS who didn't seem to even notice we'd had a crash. It made me very glad I'd bought the seat. DS loves the seat, he's got a good view out the window and he sleeps comfortably in it. We're not very well off - we got a second hand cot and a second hand pram but we decided that £220 was worth it for a car seat and I'd do it again.

I live in London and rarely see a child over 18 months rear-facing. Most people I know pass car seats down to others, so the hbbs were the first seats I bought, about £50 from Argos and had the best safety ratings for non-rear facing, including reasonable side protection. Yes, erf reduces a small risk to a smaller one, but there are other ways to reduce the risk of car crash injuries, such as going in a car less often, rarely going over 30 mph.
A risk of 3 injuries per million miles travelled as opposed to 2 per million miles is negligible if your child never reaches 1000 miles a year in a car.

If I had to drive regularly on bendy A-roads which have lots of accidents, I'd care much more about car seats - as it is I'm much more concerned about campaigns to slow down local traffic and testing my ds on road-crossing skills.

Forward facing car seats are banned in some European countries for under 5's

That tells you something.

DS1 had front-facing from 20 months, DS2 had an ERF til almost 3 and a half. My Dad was driving over to see family in France and bought it without me even asking, as he'd been reading up on them. Brilliant thing, worth every penny and if we had another DC I'd buy again.

The only downside was that I was in a crash (quite a bad one, car written off) with DS2 in that seat and aside from a bit of bruising he was absolutely fine, whereas I hit my head on the steering wheel so hard I have a scar in my hairline and was pulled from the car unconscious. We had to get rid of it after the accident and our insurance company replaced it immediately. I popped it straight down to the tip and one of the men there said they had to destroy them immediately because others pick them up and reuse them for their own DCs/sell them on. Which is an awful thought; after an accident they're proven to be weaker and less safe, why would anyone risk it? I don't piss money up the wall but would always choose the best safety rating on a car seat, regardless of price.

salene some EU countries allow drug use, some allow you to drive at 200mph and faster if you want - just because a country allows or disallows something doesn't tell you anything.

lets come back to risk to put it into perspective. look at the amount of accidents children have outside of vehicles, e.g. last year 2 MILLION kids had an accident which required them to be hospitalised - that doesn't include figures for kids treated by a GP or parents or carers. 67000 kids had accidents in kitchens, 58000 had accidents on stairs - again these figures are for kids which have been hospitalised only.

your car is one of the safest places for your child as it is.

So peggy if the law allowed you to drive around with children unrestrained would you?

YABU. Different seats have different testing. Google the ADAC testing of the Swedish pass plus test.

Why you'd want to put your child in a bare minimum seat is beyond me.

confusionis what on earth are you ok about? All babies/children were RF at some point, what makes you think they get headaches???

Also tbf other countries are already advocating RF for longer..

Peggy we get it. You think it isn't worth spending money on erf seats. But this comment makes no sense.

Salene some EU countries allow drug use, some allow you to drive at 200mph and faster if you want - just because a country allows or disallows something doesn't tell you anything.

Disallowing something does say that a country considers it less safe or good.