I think Courtney has already written a post on this matter a few years ago but I believe that this is such an important subject and needs to be revived! Let’s talk about rear-facing car seats.
I’ve always been really strict about driving my kids in car seats and safely buckled at all times – even if only driving them a few meters away. I get goose bumps and even get angry when I see kids driving unbuckled or the worst thing ever – sitting on their parents laps!
We lived in Denmark when I was pregnant with my first baby, Tila, and in Scandinavia people have a habit of driving their kids rear-facing up to age of four or even longer! (Since 1965, all children in Sweden travel rear-facing until at least four years of age, and deaths and serious injuries have been virtually eliminated!) Did you know that the majority of accidents make up frontal collisions? Rear-facing is proven to be 5 times safer than forward facing. The thing is that when a child is rear-facing the forces caused by the crash are distributed along their entire body (head, neck and back) but when a child is forward facing, crash forces cause much more stress to the neck and potentially more chances for serious or unfortunately (too) many times even fatal head and spinal injuries. For example: if you have an accident at 50km/h with a child that weights 15 kg and is forward facing, his neck is going to be struck with about 200 kg of crash forces and if he would be turned back, forces would reduce majorly – to only about 50 kg! There is a great website on this matter with even more information, crash test videos and also retailers that sell rear-facing car seats – it called RearFacing.co.uk.
There are many questions that rise up whenever I start a conversation on this subject with parents, like why until 4 years and if it really doesn’t get too uncomfortable for the kids at this age because of the limited space for their legs.
To answer the first question as simple as possible – baby’s head accounts for about 25% of its body weight, which is huge compared to adults (only 6%), plus their bones are still very soft (it takes around 15 years for the human skeleton to fully mature), now both factors combined in a crash can cause the spinal cord to stretch up to 2.5 cm, which basically means internal decapitation leading to paralysis or death.
About the comfort. No need to worry, rest assured! There are actually more possible leg positions when facing back (criss-cross, over the sides, up on the vehicle seat…) than front where legs are only dangling the entire ride (my front-facing 7-year-old keeps complaining how uncomfortable she is every single day!). Plus again, the rate of leg injury is much higher when facing forward. So, in my opinion, there is really no reason or excuse to turn the car seat around before your child turns four.
We have been using BeSafe carseats for our first two children but tried (and love) the MaxiCosi with our third one. Their newest 2wayFix base also allows rear-facing car travel from birth up to age four.
I’m curious to know how many of you drive your kids this way and which car seats you’ve used and love?
– Polona
Photo courtesy of BeSafe
You can read more from Polona on her blog Baby Jungle or visit her online boutique Baby Jungle shop!
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