To let my 11yo sit in the front seat on a long motorway journey?

[Amarette]

I have to take my DD on a long motorway journey this weekend. I have a one-year old car with excellent safety ratings for the passenger seat, with air bags etc. In fact, the safety ratings look like its safer to be in the front than the back, although they only seem to have tested child's car seats in the back so it's hard to compare.

Anyway, my friend said that she would never let her DC travel in the front seat on the motorway as its always safer for them to be in the back. Starting to question myself now as would never forgive myself if something happened to her and I had made a decision that contributed to it.

Curious what other people think? She is tall for an 11yo and an athlete so not a delicate child!

Yes of course you do @TheOrigRights but I'm just a bit bemused that car safety seems to be less of a priority for children once they're out of car seats.

There are lots of things that children want to do that they don't get to make the decisions on because they're children. This is just another one of those being a boring parent things as far as I'm concerned.

I’m also interested in the airbag question. I’ve never been 100% sure if the airbag should be on or off with a forward facing car seat in the car. It’s not something that happens very often- mainly just lifts to parties and the like

🤣Imagine if you did!😂

To those saying the front seat is more dangerous than the back.
What happens if the traffic sudddnly comes to a standstill and the HGV behind you fails to notice and slams straight through the back of your car? And your rear seats are crushed but the two front seats are still intact? This has happened before and rear seat passengers killed when the front ones survive.
The front seat is no more dangerous than the back.
You can never prepare for all eventualities.
Let your child travel in the front if you want to OP.

Presumably it's based on statistics from accidents.

I don’t know a lot about this but OP I would listen to @BertieBotts who has posted upthread and given me and many other posters lots of advice about car seats, she appears to have expertise.

Yes that's the stats I looked at. Adult 95% safety rating in front seats, child 77% rating in back seats.

Car also has automatic braking so I would suspect there is more chance of a side or rear crash than front on.

I think the statistics though might include head on collisions on single carriageway roads. The most dangerous crashes are usually head on crashes as some impatient knob one decides to overtake when it isn't safe to do so. The PP may be correct that on a motorway it isn't necessarily the back seats which are safer.

To those saying the front seat is more dangerous than the back.
What happens if the traffic sudddnly comes to a standstill and the HGV behind you fails to notice and slams straight through the back of your car? And your rear seats are crushed but the two front seats are still intact? This has happened before and rear seat passengers killed when the front ones survive.
The front seat is no more dangerous than the back.
You can never prepare for all eventualities

statistically, the back seat is safer. As with everything, like you say you can’t cover all eventualities. But in a crash, your child is more likely to survive in the rear seat.

you can put them in the front seat and hope that if you crash it’s the scenario you describe, but realistically that is less likely.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2564455/

“On average, the risk of death was 21% lower among passengers in the rear seat compared with front seat passengers. This apparent protection varied with age, restraint use, and airbag presence. The rear seat seemed to offer the greatest protection to children 0–12 years”

If you want to take the safety issue to extremes, going by rail is safer - I suspect by a larger margin than the difference between front and back seat.

The “most dangerous seat” stat will be hugely skewed by the sad number of teenage passengers who are injured/killed when their friends are driving/racing. It’s not helpful here.

Musculoskeletal isn’t just about being muscular though. When the airbag is engaged, younger children have a greater risk of a break to the neck as the bones are soft. For this reason, dd didn’t travel in the front at 11.

Sadly the train strike tomorrow is why I have to drive a long way on the motorway!

The “most dangerous seat” stat will be hugely skewed by the sad number of teenage passengers who are injured/killed when their friends are driving/racing. It’s not helpful here

The studies look at rates by age. There would be a clear skew in that age group, and it wouldn’t show that U12’s are more likely to survive in the rear if they didn’t take age into account.

statisticians take this sort of thing into account.

But I have stats for my specific car that seem to suggest front seat is safer. But its not 100% clear as they only give stats for children in car seats in the back so not a true comparison of a child in the back with no car seat versus a child in the front with extra airbags and safety features.

my 4 y/o goes in the front in his child seat and uses car seat belt. I used to have him in the back, middle seat. However after the nth time of him unclipping his harness (f*@k knows how), followed by unclipping the seat belt, always when on a dual carriageway with nowhere to pull over, I've put him in the front, with the seat back as far as it'll go. He tried unclipping once but I could see and shouted at him. Thankfully he has never tried it since.

Erm no !

Do you normally overthink everything like this. Must be draining

The only reason mine don’t sit in the front is because they argue over who gets to sit in the front so I make them both sit in the back 😂

I haven’t looked into the safety side of it since they were in child seats many many moons ago, I remember that car seats shouldn’t be used in the front.

sometimes when I take them out separately they get to sit in the front but that rarely happens

Wtf course it's not 🤣🤣🤣

My 11yo is 5'6". She sits in the front when there's only one adult in the car.

I'm 5'2". I couldn't reach the pedals of dh's old car. Should I sit in the back?

Even though about a quarter of people with a licence are unfit to hold one (sadly some for medical reasons, many being men with sexual inadequacies and cars such as BMWs), motorways are safer than many other roads.

Mine are always in the front if it’s just a parent and them.
both of them and/or both parents and they’re in the back

If there's no other adult, I've always had mine in the front once they're out of the rear facing seat and in a normal booster seat. No-one has died yet or come close to it.

But then this is MN where there are supposedly people who stick fully grown school children in reverse facing rear seats like a 18 month old 😬

Invisible Women does address this issue of women shorter than 150cm being poorly served by seatbelts and airbags.

I'm just under 150cm. When I was heavily pregnant with my first child there was probably an inch or 2 gap between the steering wheel and my enormous bump. I felt it was probably quite unsafe.