driving in France and carseats

[kveta]

Hi, I'm posting this in living overseas too, but figure I might get a better response here.

my cousin has just offered us a forward facing Britax carseat for my 9 month old DS. DS is a big boy, and has all but grown out of his baby car seat so we need a new car seat anyway, so this seemed like a win-win situation! However, I read somewhere that babies must be rear facing in france until 13 kg, and we will be driving for about an hour in france in August (to and from Dunkirk to get to the Czech Republic!).

Leaving aside the inevitable 'rear facing is safer' cries, is it the case that we'd be breaking the law to have him forward facing at nearly 11kg?

thanks in advance!

It does seam that children under 13kg do need to travel rearward in a carseat. I don't know how they in force this. I would suspect that most parents in the uk are not aware of this as the stage one carseat have the eu regulation on them so I would have asumed that it was ok for a child to travel in france in them. "butthis" say otherwise

know nothing about carseats but remember your triangle and reflective jacket

Depends how they define "baby" rather than child. I suspect it applies to under 1's.

thanks - I saw it there castle! According to a french person, it is only in the fornt that they must be rearfacing, so looks like we're ok