Do you take your own booster seats with you when you fly to the UK?

[americanlife]

We have not done the UK trip with the kids yet who are 40 and 60 pounds a piece. Anyway we will be renting a car from Heathrow and the cost of booster seat rental is almost as much as the car. It seems more sensible to take our pretty light weight booster seats with us in our luggage. Just wondering if there is a similarity on the booster seat laws between USA and UK?
Any insights appreciated. I do not fancy paying 24 quid a day for two boosters for 17 days!

Definitely take your own. Most airlines allow a full car seat to be taken as oversized luggage for free.

UK car seat law here www.gov.uk/child-car-seats-the-rules

Hello! Last year I took my UK booster seats to the US to visit my sister in California. She was surprised that the UK booster seats did not meet the requirements for child car seats in the California. I kind of got the impression that each state in the US had different safety requirements for child car seats. I may be wrong though. In general, for the UK, booster seats with a back and sides, which use the seat belt in the car for restraint are fine for children of the weight you mention.

This online retailer has information on the type of child seat for children by weight and height. If they are tall enough, you many more need the back and sides to the booster seat.

www.halfords.com/advice/kids-zone/brands/car-seats?cm_re=mmkidszone--CarSeats--CarSeatsHub

Thank you everyone for such fast and helpful responses! Ok we are bringing our Californian seats with us then but I will follow both links and just check it all out- I imagine they are designed in a similar way between countries since they have the same objective.

Does anyone else feel a little nervous about driving on the opposite side of the road to what you have adapted to? I am slightly dreading driving from Heathrow to East London even though I used to drive into central London- I feel like I have forgotten the UK rules after a decade away...

The drive from Heathrow in good traffic is just over an hour. My biggest issue with driving in the UK off the motorway is that the traffic lanes are far narrower than the US, even though the cars are the same size. It's not helped by cars parked along the sides of the roads.

BTW, I'm American but have lived in East London 10+ years..

As a tourists you don't need to be in a car seat compliant with the country you are traveling in but compliant with the country you have come from. Obviously if you are staying for an extended period you need to buy British car seats if your seats are American, but for a short visit it's fine to use your American car seats.

We bring the boosters and youngest has a 'travel' car seat.

I think California is pretty hot on car seat laws so I suspect your seats will be fine. In my state it’s literally just put your under 8 in a seat, doesn’t even specify a type! The bit I find the hardest with driving when I come back to the U.K. is driving a manual as it seems so labour instensive compared to an automatic. The different side of the road thing isn’t too bad but then we drove a lot in France before we moved stateside.

Yes, we do BUT they are UK travel seats, and only used to get to/from the airport at each end. We keep high backed boosters in the UK to use while we are there.

We also use UK car seats here, but since most of the population thinks holding a baby in your arms in the front seat (and even while driving) is acceptable, im not too bothered about using a local car seat!

Check what the current UK certification marks are. If your seats are marked to that standard, they will be fine. Technically, they should be fine. I suspect they won't be marked as such tho.

Alternatively, at that price, it would be cheaper to buy booster seats and dump on your departure. Makes a mockery of lower waste society, but would save you loads of money. Tho I don't know how you get to a shop selling car seats without any.....

The UK price is bonkers. We are hiring car seats in Australia for under £3 a day (Avis)! Have you tried a different company??

We have taken booster seats to the US from the UK as hire companies wanted ridiculous money for them in America.

When we went to Australia we bought a booster seat when there for ds2 who was 7 at the time. I think their law said you needed one if under 8. We just drove straight from the airport to a supermarket and bought one.

You can buy booster seats in the UK very cheaply if you don't need the ones with backs. It depends if you are prepared to risk the journey from Heathrow to the nearest supermarket without seats though.

Do you not have family in the UK? We stored booster seats with family. It freed up the all important space in luggage for marmite, Cadbury’s and crisps.

We got a friend to buy second hand seats off shpock/gumtree.

He met us at LHR with the seats in his car. Took me and the kids to the hotel and stayed with us while DH sorted the hire car.

DH then met us at the hotel with the hire car and we swapped the seats from friend's car to hire car.

Massive faff. Saved us a fortune. I would consider bringing own seats next time but I stupidly thought I could cope with 2 toddlers hand luggage only!

We always take ours (two high backed boosters) - as a PP said most airlines will let you take them for free. We actually put them in a separate holdall bag to protect them - usually, they just have a quick look inside the bag at check-in and once they see that the bag only contains car seats they will check it at no charge.

We've found the quality of hire car toddler seats in the UK and US pretty crappy tbh.

We've taken our own seat to the UK and checked it for free as a pp says in its own bag. We then bought a cheap but safe seat for the UK leg - think it was ~GBP80, cheaper than your rental seat hire probably!

I have just remembered that I also considered public transport to destination, hire car from there, get amazon to deliver seats to where we were staying.

I think you will get used to driving no problem. Traffic out of LHR was nowhere near as bad as we thought it would be but we were driving ti Dorset not central London.

Also, when I asked the same question on FB, everyone who replied took their own seats but our airline was going to charge.

Thanks everyone. Very helpful. No one is able to collect us at the airport. We have actually booked a hotel at heathrow as we are concerned we will be too tired after 11 hour flight to then drive into East London. Then we will probably collect a car the next morning and drive to east london. We will not get to family for a week so we do need to bring them with us. We could national express it to victoria station but the we need to taxi it to east london and i recall how extortionate london black cans were ten years ago! It also seems car hire in east london is more expensive than from Heathrow ( 20 ish quid a day). Someone has put me onto inflatable booster seats on amazon so we may try one of those.

www.walmart.com/ip/Harmony-Juvenile-Youth-Backless-Booster-Car-Seat-Granite/48859727?wmlspartner=wlpa&adid=22222222227037253716&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=c&wl3=84926209232&wl4=pla-166497659792&wl5=9031194&wl6=&wl7=&wl8=&wl9=pla&wl10=8175035&wl11=online&wl12=48859727&wl13=&veh=sem

This is one someone recommended to me and just saw walmart have one too. www.amazon.com/stores/page/45BA242C-E723-45CB-92AD-4015335374EA?tag=mumsnetforum-21

It always takes me a few days to adjust back to driving in the U.K. on trips home.

Just be really careful each time you get back in the car and when you are turning right (I have the children trained to remind me every time!)

Remember no undertaking, no turning on red and no u turns.

Look at bubble bums. On amazon. They are inflatable boosters (not high back) and are approved for use in usa and uk too, I think. Anyway, we used them for several years and are super easy to travel with and also v useful when home and trying to squeeze a visiting child into the skinny space known as the middle seat.

Driving in the uk is surprisingly easy to adapt to if you remember
Keep yourself (as the driver) in the middle of the road
At roundabouts, your instinct will be to go the wrong way round so follow the other people
Use your accelerator, people are much more zippy in the UK
Most junctions are yield, very few stops
Do not turn right on red
The moments to be very careful are when you are pulling out of a junction, its more easy to go to the wrong side then than at any other time

They may not fit the UK safety standards, I would check first.

When we traveled to the UK from Oz we asked a relative to get us a couple and meet us at the airport, worked out much cheaper than rental, and no worrying about stains etc

@BalloonFlowers
We also use UK car seats here, but since most of the population thinks holding a baby in your arms in the front seat (and even while driving) is acceptable, im not too bothered about using a local car seat!

That's totally untrue and a ridiculous statement.

Totally true. Where I live, it is exceedingly common to see Mum in the passenger seat cradling baby.
It is not unknown to see Dad driving with baby in arms or toddler on knee. It is exceptionally scary, as are all the roads here (note I have not specified where here is).
I will NOT trust a local brand car seat given the attitudes to road safety here.

Where do you live? I'm sorry but I think you're grossly exaggerating. I'm on the road everyday for a couple of hours and I don't see this.

Just coming back to say that I don't check the baby's car seat. She sits in it on the plane. It's a cosco scenera and cost $40 from Walmart. It weighs about as much as a sack of potatoes which I consider light and I use a bungee to hook it on to the stroller.

It's a fab car seat and a cost effect and efficient solution to the problem.