Parents - Rear or Front facing car seats?

Pulsedriver

Pulsedriver

Pulsedriver

Soldato
Joined
19 Dec 2003
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Hey folks,

A debate i've been closely following, rear vs front facing car seats.

http://rearfacing.co.uk/

Seems to suggest rear facing is safer, but then you can hardly find them to buy anywhere, and even then, only a few models and VERY expensive, is this just media scaremongering?

What do you use for your baby/child car seats? (Assuming they are let's say 9 months+) as the first 9 months I know it's rear facing anyway.
 
We used rear facing until she was a bit older, probably 12-15 months, but she was a small baby. After that forward facing, it's more convenient as they get bigger, rear facing just isn't practical anymore.

Investing in a decent car seat should give good protection to an 18month old child when forward facing.
 
Ours outgrew the rear facing standard ones by 9 months and then went straight to front facing ones, holds them OK, not sure on the overall safety of either
 
I was always under the impression that the first seat will be rear facing, and once they hit around 18-20lbs then the progression is an upright forward facing job.

This is what we were planning on doing, our little one is 6 months old and she has nearly outgrown her rear facing seat.

In the videos supplied on that website, the forward facing tests do not seem to have the dummies secured properly in their seats and there is no mention of the speed of the impact, but the information given does seem to provide food for thought - it's certainly worth doing a little more research into it.

I'd be interested to see a video of a seat secured via an ISOFIX system and with the "child" secured properly, as ISOFIX seems a lot more solid than fitting the same seat with a belt.
 
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The thing is, for something so popular, surely IF they were better then everywhere would be promoting those, after all, they could charge more for them, and if people HAVE to buy them they won't be loosing out...

Just seems interesting, like you say, ISOFIX is generally much much safer as you don't need to worry about securing the seat belt to hold the seat, other than clamping the SEAT ISOFIX mounts in place, then just tighten the internal seatbelt of the seat on to the child.
 
We had rear facing when the girls were new-born and until about 12months old then switched to a front facing and finally they are both now in booster seats with backs and side protection.

The front facing seat had a belt locking mechanism on it when was setup the seat was going nowhere. The ISOFIX seats are designed to work upto Group 1 and need a top teether as well.
 
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Rear facing seats are safer, I don't think there's much room for dispute in that. But the down sides are that as they get older, there's nowehere for their legs to go, they can't see as much so get bored and shout the roof off, and travelling backwards gives more people travel sickness than usual.

The usual progression is to start with a rear facing group 0+ car seat until they're between 9 and 15 months. The general consensus is that the longer you can keep them in this the better. Then they go into a really padded forward facing thing that has a 5 point harness and they can stay in that until they're 3, then its a booster seat with sides until they're about 5-6 and then just a booster seat until they're about 11.
 
Rear facing ones can't sit up the front of a car with passenger airbags, airbag is right at the babys head. Bad news in an accident.
 
MikeHiow said:
I'd be interested to see a video of a seat secured via an ISOFIX system and with the "child" secured properly, as ISOFIX seems a lot more solid than fitting the same seat with a belt.
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I don't think there would be much difference, even though you might perceive the ISOFIX one to be much safer because the seat doesn't move at all. There is no way a properly secured baby seat is going anywhere, a seatbelt is designed to hold much much more weight than a child in a baby seat. ISOFIX is a bit of a con if you ask me, unless you're moving the seat between cars a lot. I wish I hadn't bothered with it.
 
Wicksta said:
I don't think there would be much difference, even though you might perceive the ISOFIX one to be much safer because the seat doesn't move at all. There is no way a properly secured baby seat is going anywhere, a seatbelt is designed to hold much much more weight than a child in a baby seat. ISOFIX is a bit of a con if you ask me, unless you're moving the seat between cars a lot. I wish I hadn't bothered with it.
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You have returned to us :D
 
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