Travel to USA - compatible car seats

[alliemarg]

We're going to Florida in a few weeks and we want to purchase a spare car seat to take with us. Unfortunately we have the Pearl, which does not seatbelt in.

We'll get a fairly cheap one but does anybody have any advice on what car seats are actually compatible with US cars? The lady in John Lewis said it wasn't a given that they all fit?

I've been back to the States several times since DS was born and not had any trouble with any of our car seats. When he was tiny we took a Maxi Cosi Cosatto, then later a Britax Eclipse and most recently a Britax Evolva 123.

I can't imagine why a British car seat would not fit in an American car, as the cars there tend to be bigger and the seat belts longer. I have a harder time here, some small cars don't have belts long enough to go all the way through the car seat and still buckle.

If you're really worried you could probably hire a car seat (if you're hiring a car) or borrow one (if you're visiting family there).

Are you hiring a car? Or will someone be driving you?

ISOFIX is an international standard so you shouldn't have any problem with connecting in a hire car as it will be fairly new and every car manufactured since 2013 should have the anchor points. You can check with your hire car in advance though.

If you are staying with friends then find out what type of car they have and check on the manufacturers website if the seat fits that model.

Thanks everyone, we've been advised Britax and Graco are widely used in the US so should be fine. Annoyingly we can find no UK car seats with information on US compatibility but if the worse comes to the worse we'll just have to rent when we get there.

It's not about US compatability. ISOFIX is a worldwide standard so it will be compatible.

There may be some models of cars which do not have space for a particular car seat. The manufacturers provide this information by model and year of car rather than by country.

The isofix will probably fit but I think there are different standards for car seats in the US so they won't necessarily be legal. I'm pretty sure Britax has entirely different seats in the US market for this reason. We borrowed car seats last time we visited an they were quite different to the ones we have here (top tethers and chest straps for example).

Im not sure how much of an issue it is when you are just visiting but it explains why you are struggling to find US compatibility info on seats sold in the UK.

They have totally different legal standards over there and while a car seat might fit fine, it won't be legal to use there which might give you a problem with insurance.

Unless you want to use a car seat on the plane I recommend either hiring a seat or driving immediately to a big store like Target or Babies R Us and just buying a cheap one when you get there. They are cheaper there anyway.