Important car seat safety

Laura Zoey - posted on 10/31/2011 ( 7 moms have responded )

http://www.car-safety.org/rearface.html
http://www.aap.org/advocacy/releases/car...
http://www.healthychildren.org/English/s...
http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/roadsafety/safed...
http://www.rearfacing.co.uk/

Ok so there's alot of links up there, for USA, Canada, Britain... And the common conclusion is rear facing is THE safest way to ride in the car!

Picture an adult with whiplash, a child in the car with them could have internal decapitation.
A child's head is much bigger in proportion to their neck then it is at adulthood.
When adults get whiplash, the same crash could kill a toddler who is front facing.

http://www.joelsjourney.org/

The minimum age a child should be front facing appears to be age 2, according to all the latest research.

When your baby grows out of the infant car seat look at the convertible seats, some are as cheap as $40 on sale and some go up to $240!
The more you pay the longer your kid will be able to use it. Like the $240 one is good up until 8 years old! 80lbs and 49 inches.
The cheaper seats don't mean they're less safe, they just have less cool gadgets and won't last as long.

Many people worry about toddlers legs touching the seat.
This is NOT a problem! When you get into a crash the legs fly towards the child's chest and the knees naturally bend up to the chest. No injury has ever been reported to legs of a toddler rear facing.




Many people think their kids are bored rear facing, but in convertible seats they have the same amount of window to look out of, just the back half instead of the front half. Besides, what they have never known won't affect them right!

Some people have concerns that their kid gets motion sickness, there's accounts of kids both
Front and rear facing having motion sickness so turning the seat around for this reason may not even help and it does risk their neck.

Some people say that their kid is strong enough or coordinated enough so their neck can handle being front facing. But the amount of muscles doesn't really matter at all, the fact is the spinal cord can only stretch so far and if it's stretched further it will snap. No amount of muscles will strengthen the spinal cord! Every baby has the same strength of spine and the fact shows that younger babies belong rear facing.

Even tall kids can rear face! There's car seats available with rearfacing height limits up to 49inches so even tsll kids can be safe!
Same for heavy kids, average convertible seat goes to 35lbs, but some go to 40 or 45lbs! And your average kid isn't 45lbs til 5 years or more.

So please, look into car seat safety, don't go with the bare minimum laws. Rear face as long as you possibly can and keep your children's spines safe!