Coach transfer with baby

[jackiesgirl]

First time travelling abroad with a baby - we’re not planning to hire a car for our holiday, but what happens with an airport coach transfer and car seats? Do we need to bring it or just sit him on our lap? He will be just turned 1 when we travel

You sit him on your lap.

I would not assume that you can fit a child seat on a coach. Usually the seats are too close together, and the seatbelt might not be 3-point. The expectation is that he can sit on your lap, so he might not even have a spare seat to sit on.

If you do sit LO on your lap, don't share a seatbelt, just put it on yourself. It's more dangerous for him to be between you and the seatbelt than to be unrestrained.

use a carrier, then put the seatbelt across you both. a carrier is so useful for the plane as well. we use a carrier to take taxis both in the UK and abroad.

You need to wedge the carrier in or use the seatbelt. Interesting many will carry a baby. Obviously not safe. Interesting to see what the seatbelt laws are where you are going but maybe coaches don’t count?

Essentially the whole coach forms a protective layer round you. Coach accidents are rare and coaches will absorb most of the impact unless you happen to hit another coach/hgv. Just sit him on your knee.

@helpfulperson That’s categorically not true!

What 😆😆😆😆😆

Unless you have paid for it, a seat may not be available as babies travel free. On your lap is the normal way

This is actually correct although it sounds illogical. I could quibble over the exact meaning of "forms a protective layer" but the passengers of the coach will not come off worse unless the coach crashes into something heavier or falls off a cliff.

It is the same reason why a lot of US school buses still don't have seatbelts, and why you don't need seatbelts on the number 24 bus to travel into town.

Again to reiterate DO NOT EVER SHARE A SEATBELT WITH A CHILD. Apologies for shouting, just wanted to make it stand out.

We are doing this soon with 14 month old. She will be sitting on one of our laps.

Which bit? A coach is capable of withstanding a much greater impact than a car and is much less likely to end up on it's side or upside down so injury risk from going flying is significantly less.

Unless you bring your own, it is very unlikely there will be one.
For an hour transfer airport-hotel, I would just have baby on my lap.
You could try contacting the car rentals companies at the airport and see if they would rent one without a car rental. You leave husband to deal with luggage and go and pick it up.

I’d just do my lap. The same way she would travel with me on the bus to the airport in the UK.

@helpfulperson But the baby won’t have a seatbelt. Coaches are not very robust and many adults don’t use the seatbelts and luggage goes flying!

Just look at the Canary Island crash today! Who would want a loose baby on that?

I feel like this is really important information to know but at the risk of asking a silly question, may I ask why? What the danger is?

This is absolutely batshit advice. The cause of most serious injuries/deaths of young children in vehicle accidents is the head/neck and spinal injuries caused by rapid deceleration and the head/neck being thrown forward at force. No “protective layer” will prevent that from happening to an unrestrained infant or toddler. The safe way to travel is with the child properly restrained in an appropriate (rear facing) car seat, which you probably won’t be able to do on a coach. I would book a private transfer and take my own car seat, which is free with most airlines.

@TheRealWhacker Agreed. Hire a car.
(You are 66/1 for the Grand National tomorrow. Good luck!)

Around 20,000 coaches crash in the EU each year with 30,000 casualties, of whom 150 die. The attached gives recent research on improvements. Note how people are injured and the use of seat belts reducing injuries.

If you share a seatbelt, in the event if an accident you basically squash your child, you would fly forwards and all your weight goes into squishing them against the seat belt. If you go on a plane with a baby they have a separate seat belt that loops through yours (in most countries), it's much better, keeps your weight entirely separate.

Coaches have the structural integrity of a paper bag and there is no safe way to secure an infant on one. Take a car seat and go by taxi.

Are coaches different to public buses? I’d have no issue taking my baby on a bus with no seatbelts.

If you crash, the weight of the adult (multiplied because of the crash forces) will crush the child against the seatbelt, which can cause fatal injuries. It's more dangerous than them being unrestrained. Seatbelts must only ever be worn by one person.

For the person who said it's "batshit advice" to take a baby on a coach ever (!) I think this is down to personal risk tolerance. The chances of an accident are not zero, but they are extremely low. If you prefer to get a private transfer so you can use a car seat, that's fair, but it's not at all batshit to take a child on a bus or coach with no restraint, people do it every day.

There is not literally a protective layer, that could be conjuring up a misleading image. What I believe the poster who said that is referring to is more of a combination of the fact that a coach is extremely heavy, meaning it will decelerate much more slowly even in a crash situation. That makes it less dangerous for the occupants. Stopping suddenly is what is dangerous in a crash. The other thing which is protective about the size and weight of a coach is that the chances are if a coach crashes it will be against something much smaller and lighter. This transfers more of the impact to the smaller, lighter vehicle.

Personally I've actually experienced this phenomenon from both sides, fortunately at extremely low speeds. I've been in a car which was involved in a side impact with a HGV at about 5mph - the lorry was pulling out of a petrol station and we were pulling out of a parking space. The car was written off and my mum had to be cut out of it. She suffered whiplash, luckily my sister and I were OK, just cuts and bruises. As far as I know the lorry driver was OK.

I've also been in a tram which crashed into a van which had disregarded a traffic light. The tram was only just starting to move, so the impact was fairly light but the passengers barely felt anything - nobody even fell out of their seat, a couple of standing people stumbled slightly. We were all able to walk off perfectly fine. DS2 was a toddler at the time, I can't remember if he was in his buggy or sat next to me on the seat, he was also fine. Again van completely written off (driver was OK though thankfully). The tram barely even had a scratch on the paint job.

If the travel is somewhere involving mountain roads or other steep cliffs then I might make a different risk assessment than I would for motorway travel, which is also generally very safe because everybody is going in the same direction.

@TeamGeriatric Read the details I posted. It’s not that simple. People get thrown out of the coach via broken windows. Seats are insufficiently robust too. Exit routes are compromised. There are no air bags. I don’t see 20,000 accidents as minimal but coach travel isn’t unsafe, but the reasons accidents happen makes grim reading!