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Posted by admin in Babies 0-6 months, Babies 6 months - 4 years, General, Safety on February 19th, 2014
By law, babies can legally face forward in the car from 6 months of age and baby capsules are generally used to 6 months of age, so many parents presume that baby can go straight to a forward facing carseat once they turn 6 months old. But is this really the safest option?
Safe N Sound crash testing
According to Kidsafe Australia, more children die from injuries sustained by or in motor vehicles than from cancer and diseases of the nervous system combined.
Many parents turn their babies forward-facing at 6 months because the law says they can, unaware that this could put their baby at risk of serious neck, head and internal injuries in a collision. In a front-on collision, your baby’s head will snap forward abruptly which can cause considerable, sometimes permanent damage to their spine. It is not just a matter of head strength. Just because your baby holds their head up well doesn’t mean they are strong enough not to suffer this kind of injury.
Babies aren’t small adults and they’re not built the same way as an adult so the risk of serious injury in a car crash when they are forward facing is very real. Babies have surprisingly heavy heads in relation to their bodies: the average nine month old child’s head makes up 25% of his body weight, while an adult’s head only makes up 6% of its body weight. In a forward facing accident the body is restrained by the inbuilt harness, but your baby’s head is not so the force of the accident will snap their head and neck forward quite sharply, even in a minor accident.
To see the difference in an accident between rear and forward facing you might like to watch this video:
Rear -v- forward facing video
We suggest to our customers that they guided by the baby’s weight rather than his or her age. If your child is six months old but only weighs 8.5kg, he or she can and should stay in their rear-facing restraint until she weighs enough to move to the next stage seat. There are many affordable products on the market today that will allow the average child to rear face beyond 6 months old.
When considering whether to move your baby to a forward facing restraint, it’s important to consider safety but also the needs of your family. Some parents report that their babies are very unhappy in the rear-facing position and this does need to be taken into account if its so distracting you can’t drive!
This post is Part 1 of a 6 Part Series written by our Restraint Fitting Team to try and help parents sort through the many products, myths and misinformation that exist around kids and cars.
Trying to work out which one of the many car seats on the market to buy or hire as your babies first restraint product can be confusing. We know you want a quick answer – what’s the safest? The path to making a choice these days is more bewildering than ever, thanks to a raft of product innovations and the recently implemented National child restraint laws introduced in 2010. If you don’t know your locking clip from your top tether, or what a travel system is all about, let us help cut through the confusion.
Children aged between four years and under seven years to use an approved forward facing restraint OR an approved booster seat.
If a car has two or more rows of seats, children under four years cannot travel in the front seat;
Children aged between four and seven years will not be permitted to sit in the front seat unless all other seating positions are already occupied by children under seven years.
Just like seatbelt laws, drivers will be fined and incur demerit points if passengers under seven years of age are not wearing an approved child restraint.
Children under 6 months of age must use a rearward facing child restraint and travel only in the rear row of a motor vehicle. If your vehicle does not have a rear row, this does not apply. However, a rearward facing child restraint cannot be used in the front seat where there is a passenger airbag.
Most parents are keen to move their child into a forward-facing car seat as soon as possible, so parents seeing the switch as a milestone like baby getting first teeth or taking his or her first steps. Understandably, parents think their baby will be happier facing forward and getting a better view of the world. This may be true in some cases but its a huge risk to take. The baby doesn’t understand that they’re much safer facing rearwards in the event of a collision so its up to us as parents to manage that risk for them.
The most dangerous collisions tend to be front on and a child in a forward facing seat will be flung more forcefully forwards. Additionally, the load of the impact on a baby’s body in a forward facing seat will inevitably be concentrated on the harness area (read – on baby’s internal organs), whereas in a rearfacing seat the load of deceleration is spread across the shell of the car seat, so it’s less concentrated and a much lower impact load on baby. Also in a rear facing seat the baby’s head movement will be much less, so the risk of serious injury to their head and neck will be much reduced (this is a particular issue for babies as their heads are larger relative to their bodies than those of older children and adults).
So much research evidence has built up on this from crash testing that Europe is introducing new laws to keep babies rearfacing until 15 months.
We recommend you keep your baby rear-facing as long as possible.
Part 2 to follow next week – how to choose a rear facing restraint?