Italy and child seats?

[bringonyourwreckingball]

Hi, hoping an MNer in Italy can help, we are flying to Pisa in the summer and I need to know about child seat requirements in cars. Dd1 is 9 and tall for her age (at least 139 cms) so doesn't legally need a car seat in the UK. We have a trunki back pack thing that converts to a car seat but she would prefer not to take it. What are the rules? I've googled but the results were ambiguous and/or contradictory.

Hi,

I live in Italy and I'm ashamed to say I don't know the law regarding child seats , despite having a 10 year old. DS has not used a car seat for a couple of years, just in the back with the ordinary seat belt. Everyday I see very young children in cars with no child seat, in the front seat with not even a seat belt, even kids and babies on the knee of the driver (it really is frightening to see it). However, I have never seen or heard of anyone being stopped by the police for having the children unrestrained. So, don't worry about being stopped by police if you don't have a car seat - you won't be.

What does your DD1 use here? If she still has some form of seat then maybe sit her in the car without one and see how the seatbelt fits. The most important thing is the lap belt - if it's still quite high up across the soft bit of her tummy then she's be better on the Trunki to lift her up. I've read that having the diagonal part of the seatbelt close to the neck is not quite so bad, it's more that it annoys the child (and therefore they might be tempted to tuck that part - dangerously - under their arm to stop the irritation) than that it's unsafe. If the lap belt looks ok then she should be ok without the Trunki on holiday.

My son is 141cm tall and 9 years old. I'm not getting a booster for him (it would only be a cushion anyway, not one with a back on) in our taxi I've booked in Majorca for the end of next month. DD1 is 6, she's taking the Trunki. She still has a high backed booster in our car, but I'm not going to all the trouble of taking that with us.

We used this with dd last summer, she would have been around 132cm at the time.

totstotravel.co.uk/blog/car-seat-laws-italy/

The above guidance is useful but tbh I visit Italy often and see toddlers on the handlebars of Vespas so I am not sure how strict it is!

Hmm, that link seems to say you need a booster seat up to 150cm, i am surprised, isn't it only 135cm here?

The official Italian police website says that booster seats should be used up to 36kg and 150cm. However, in practice, like Gandolfo, I regularly see children from DS's preschool here in Italy in cars without even a seatbelt on, or sitting very precariously on a scooter. They all think I'm completely mad to have DS rear facing at the age of 3!

If you're happy, from a safety perspective, for your DD to leave her Trunki at home, then you definitely don't need to worry about the police stopping you.

Whatever the laws are in Italy you can guarantee that most Italians will ignore them! Italians aren't big on following rules and regulations.

And that's not me being anti-Italian in any way, just what I observed while living there. Being a queuing, rule-following Brit I often had my leg pulled for being so conformist!

One thing to bear in mind is that in the extremely unlikely event of an accident you may have issues with insurance payout for personal injury if they find your child wasn't restrained in the correct way according to law. A friend of mine lost out on a claim for this reason.
I drive in Italy and my 136cm child travels with a booster.
Also, you never know if you'll get stopped by an arsey policeman! There are a few and if you don't have fluent Italian to butter them up nicely you could well risk a fine

In Tuscany in August there are usually quite a few checks with all those camper vans and German/Dutch/uk cars milling around. The last time I went 3 years ago there were quite a lot of traffic police stopping cars.