Why hasn't the change in law (about car seats) been better published

[katymac]

About under 11 yrs needing a booster cushion?

Don't know. Think they need to do it through schools as once your youngest kid gets to school age you don't really shop in the places who might know like Mothercare and nursery departments. After all it will affect things like lift sharing which is being encouraged to reduce traffic and pollution at peak times.

no idea, but the government better get its act together soon. Despite reading up, I'm still not sure whether they are going for 135cm or 145cm as the height guide. DS1 is only 8, but is 133cm tall - I need to know what I'm supposed to be doing!

Can we just use an ordinary cushion though? Three booster seats do not fit across my back seat.

Nobody seems to have heard about it at all (apart from mumsnetters!) ANd I agree serenity about the confusion over the height.

TG I don't think so. also you aren't suppsoed to use a booster with justa lap belt which many slightly oldr cars still have. You can an over-3 in the front still though iirc, but it is less than ideal and dangerous with an airbag.

I read about this in the Mothercare catalogue and then spent ages searching the web without success trying to find out if they were going to make exceptions for occasional short journeys, as was initially proposed. I found ROSPA's response to the proposed legislation, which said that they were not in favour of the exceptions (typical!) but couldn't find anything on the final version that was adopted.
Basically the initial proposal seemed quite rational and to take into account the fact that while it's easy to comply most of the time, occasionally you find yourself in a situation where major inconvenience is caused, but ROSPA wanted to be totally hardline on this.... Anyone know what the final legislation said?

Tinygang - iirc from one of the 'discussion' documents if your car cannot actually fit three boosters then you would be exempt (same as using taxis etc). DS1 currently uses a cushion, we wouldn't be able to use a booster until we change DD's rather large seat. We can't put him in the front because there is an airbag.

This really needs to be published in plain english by a neutral party. I was looking at car seats in Mothercare yesterday, and it didn't say anything about heights, or exemptions. My Mum felt that the wording was actually quite biased towards needing big expensive car seats - all the literature was attached to those kind of seats.....

wharf rat - this is following on from an EU ruling, so I'd imagine it applies to you too.

There was a thread about this a couple of weeks ago and I posted a link to the original discussion document. There was supposed to be a final decision made on 5/9/05, but I can't find any documentation relating to that.

Following that thread a couple of weeks back I tried to speak to our local police - am still waiting for th ecall to be returned. I may ask our Head to email them as this will have an effect on parents taking children to school events like sports and concerts.

Here is the last thread. There's a link somewhere in there to the document, plus tables showing what age/weight needs what seats, and excemptions etc

One of the problems I have encountered trying to get two boosters and a child seat in the back is that as seats have been redesigned over the years to be safer, they are also wider and bulkier overall. We have a fairly large family car and really struggle to get all three in the back, if we are going anywhere as a family. Unless you have a people carrier (which i can't afford), it is not straightforward. I spent ages looking for a second booster seat that was narrow enough to fit in and they still don't fit as well as I would like. I got my passenger airbag disconnected when I had my third child, so that dd would still be able to have a friend around to tea occasionally. However, because it takes so long to strap them all in the back, I tend to let one sit in the front on a booster anyway.

Thank you serenity. Dd(7) is tall, and has a cushion in between younger ds and dd who are on boosters. I don't want to put her in the front either because of the airbag.

I agree this needs better clarity and publicity. I'm totally all for in car safety for children, but one of us is sure to be doing something wrong come May - quite unintentionally - because the rules are not clear enough.

I wish someone would invent slim-line boosters. They seem un-necessarily wide to me at the sides.

Katyp, you're so right about the fact that seats are huge now. I wonder if this is the reason why so many people are using massive people carriers instead of smaller cars? I mean, you used to be able to fit a child seat and two adults on the back seat in comfort (or four kids w/o seats) but now it's almost always impossible to have more than two kids in the back seat because you have to have car seats (though three adults are fine).

It's the lack of proper info that worries me

Is it dangerous to have a three year old in the fron of a car with an airbag? I didn't know this! Can anyone enlighten me?

I don't know the theory in detail Sparkle, but the thinking is that airbags deploy at such a huge force that they can do more harm than good to little children, who could be badly hurt by them going off.

some info here

I had a guy from Norfolk County Council come out & check the fit of our carseats a few days ago... he said the big change was about under 3's must use at least a seat belt, he made it sound like the other changes weren't definite; it's still only proposed, that's why people don't know, yet.

Sparklemagic About airbags he said if you had to put a child in the front with an airbag, put the seat all the way back. And absolutely never use a rear-facing seat with an airbag. Airbag is designed to slow down a 75kg adult, and it still tends to leave bruies on adults, it's simply too much for children.

thanks guys for the info - very useful!

Sw a poster in our kids A and E today which stated all kids under 11 need boosters/seats. Not sure if it was particularly related to the law or just safety advice.

It hasn't been in the media because it doesn't fit the needs of a story which are:

No celebrities kid has been hurt this way.
No one is condemning child seats as evil.
No one has produced an "organic" child seat, nor does Apple make them.
Car crashes aren't sport.

Without celebrity or controversry, it just won't happen. Look at MMR. Statitistically stupid samples blown out of proportion by the braless wonders on daytime TV, citing "concerns".

The Argos catalogue (that source of all knowledge on matters legal) says, and I quote,

'From next May please make sure that children under 135cm height and under 12 use an appropriate child restraint'

We already do and I'm all in favour of making it law - but I think the lack of publicity and specific guidelines is appalling.

It's height and weight dependent could be why. I have a niece who's 11 and who's already bigger than I am - 5ft., 4.5 inches tall and 55kg. She hasn't even been thru puberty, either (her dad is 6ft., 5in. and his sister and mum both 6ft., 1in.)! She doesn't need a booster seat, believe me!

And in mothercare it says under 12 and less than 1.5 metres...confusing!