..to ask why you allow your child to sit in the front seat of the car?

[schooltripwoes]

By child I mean one small enough to need a car seat / booster (under 11s or thereabouts).

All safety advice I've ever read clearly states that children are generally much, much safer sat in the back of the car if there were to be an accident.

Passenger seat safety features such as airbags are designed to protect an adult body, and as such may not work well for a young child.

Yet many of the children arriving at my children's school / hobbies travel sat in the front of the car (I notice this mainly for ages 5-8). In some cases it's because the rear seats are occupied with several siblings / lift shares, but in most cases it's not.

If you let your child sit in the front, why?

'Allow', 'let'. Nope, my children were in the front as babies/ toddlers because that's where I decided to put them, not because they wanted to and I'm one of those permissive parents that gets people het up. But hey, they both bed shared, one of them was combi fed, one was on solids by
20 weeks- calm down, it was blw, both were at nursery by 10 months and sometimes we go to Macdonalds for breakfast.

I've always wondered this too where there's room in the back. I was about 12 before I was allowed to sit in the front and I followed the same rule with my ds.

I used to get car sick too. But safety comes first. And to be fair I just felt sick, I wasn't actually sick. Maybe my mum would have felt differently if I had continually vomited!

It's about balance of risks for me. If there are 2 adults in the car, obviously baby goes in the back. Maybe with one of the parents too, to attend to the DC if he / she cries, throws up, needs milk, etc. With just 1 parent in the car, it may actually be better to have the baby in the front passenger seat, so if baby cries, makes a noise etc., the driver isn't craning over her shoulder to look backwards and see if anything's untoward. It's arguably better to reduce the likelihood of an accident happening at all, than to have extra protection if an accident does happen. I don't think it's entirely clear cut.

Only allow it if we are going to the dump and back seats are down and we switch the airbag off.

14 years ago now but DD1s seat had to be in the front as it was the only seat that didn't have buckle crunch.
And no, I wasn't buying a new car.
As soon as she went in the next size seat she was in the back.

PS, where I live, 4 yo in the front on boosters seats, children on laps and unrestrained children in the back is pretty normal--and absolutely sickening...

Only one of ours did as she was travel sick.
None of the others do, it's safer in the back and as a parent the front seat is mine. Kids place is at the back.

Because I’m capable of making many and varied risk assessments on a daily basis. Some things I do other will deem too risky, some things others do I will deem too risky.

Well you’d hate me. I used to walk to school with the DC every single day instead of driving them. It was a far less safe option, and I was risking their lives daily instead of keeping them as safe as possible by popping them in the car. By comparison the difference between an appropriate car seat in the front seat vs the back (in the UK, in a car with a European airbag) is absolutely miniscule. If I prioritised my DCs’ safety highly enough to drive them I still wouldn’t insist on putting them in the back if I though that there were significant other advantages to putting them in the front.

I’m going to be flamed here but if they are in the front with the airbag off, seat back further than mine by a fair way (my 11 year old does), is that not as safe as in the rear?

Because I turn the airbag off & push the seat back as far as I can.

Have you seen the video of the car where the back was taken clean away & if the child who was in the car at the time had been there instead of the front she’d be dead?

You can judge me all you want but I make it as safe as possible & it’s not every journey. My youngest however screams & screams which is a lot more dangerous to drive with than a seat he’s in a car seat with, airbag off & seat as far back as it will go.

One of my old cars wouldn't fit a car seat in the back as the seatbelts weren't long enough so car seat would have to go in the front and other passengers in the back. There was no passenger airbag though.

My DS sat in the front as I had a 2 seater car with no back seats. ISO fix car seat with the airbag switched off.

My now 30 year old wasn't allowed in the front till he was 11 and tall enough. Dd was 8 and had grown as tall as me, so I figured she was safe enough.
I don't understand babies in car seats in the front though.
Most car accidents happen within a mile from home, so not going very far isn't really worth the risk.

Because the risk of having an accident is very low, and they enjoy it.
I do take precautions, I wear a set belt for instance, but I don’t want to go into every scenario having risk assessed it. To me that’s no way to live.
BUT my youngest is a very tall 11, and I never heard this advice before, so may have acted on it if I had. Where have other people heard this? I’m sure you’re right op, but I don’t have a tv or much to do with mainstream media- except radio 4 , who seem to have failed me in this instance.

I didnt realise it wasnt as safe.

No it’s not as safe as the back.
Justbthink few years back when airbags weren’t common.
The passenger seat at the front was called the seat of the dead for a reason.

I don’t have a passenger seat airbag.

DD has a habit of sitting in the back seat with her feet up against the passenger seat, and rightly or wrongly I have visions of her legs breaking if we have even a mild shunt (I don’t always know she’s doing it, of course she’s been told not too).

We don’t drive much anyway, and it’s all 20mph speed limits round here.

My 10 yo does but she is over 140cm . My car is very small. Only one person can sit in comfort in the back and that person is d's (4) in his car seat behind dd.

I have a bad back and if I put the drivers seat far enough forward for a non tiny person to sit behind (or a person in a car seat with legs sticking out) it causes back pain.

Carsickeness of children is another reason I'm sure.

I would only put a child old enough to be sensible and not touch anything in the front as well as worrying about height. I would tend to put the more sensible child rather than tallest in the front if both were over 135cm or so.

1- because the back is full
2 - to minimise fighting , which is very distracting

3- because it’s a van or 2 seater

When dd was a baby she had to go in the front with the seat pushed right back because her car seat didn’t properly fit in the back seat. When she was 1 I bought a bigger car as I was pregnant again and she and the new baby went in the back.

My kids fight so utterly horrendously that it is safer to have one in the front because I'm then not distracted to the point of crashing. Reducing the risk of crashing in the first place is worth the trade off.

Lets face it, it doesn’t matter wtf you do as a parent because someone will always be a judgemental twat

Also is the middle lap belt only seat safe for kids?

Personally I don’t think a lap belt is safe full stop. Mind you I can’t remember the last time I saw one in a car....

My DC went in the front in their baby seat so that I could see them. Airbag switched off and seat right back. If someone else was in the car then the seat AND the other person went in the back.

My youngest is 15 now and taller than me but he prefers travelling in the backseat still.....