Is this child seat at all safe?

Iamzod

Iamzod

Iamzod

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UK
My GF regularly takes someone else's kid to ride one of her horses (one of the really small ones) and they have given her a car seat to use as she is about 4-5 years old, now we have no kids ourselves and so don't own a car seat & have never fitted one, but I noticed that it has slots that look like they are for some kind of harness which is not present. When they have put it in our car themselves in the past they just plonk the seat directly onto the leather & then put the seatbelt around the child in the seat.

This seat isn't that light as it's a big plastic thing that must weigh several kilos easily, surely in a crash it's just going to crush the kid and probably cause more injuries than just not bothering?

I'm guessing this thing is meant to be fixed in place somehow?
 
Yeah, most kids seats use isofix to attach them to the seat (at the bottom) and the car's seatbelt should be going behind the seat and have its own in-built seatbelt for the kid.
 
Sounds like one of ours. The 5 point harness is for when the child is small. You then move up to using the adult seat belt threaded through when they grow. Check that the height of the adult seat belt is not going to garotte the child in the event of sudden hard braking.
 
you have to take the harness out once they reach a certain weight. I think it might even be illegal to use the harness once the child is above a certain weight.
 
We have two car seats for our 5 year old. One with Isofix in the BMW, and one without Isofix in the Mini. He is held in by the car seatbelt in both cases.

I too was a little concerned about the weight of the seat adding momentum in the non Isofix seat, but was assured that it is quite safe. As has been pointed out, simply make sure the belt is in the correct position (dictated by the slots in the seat) and not too high around the child's neck.
 
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