Car safety and child seats Child safety week 2011 Jun 2011
Child Safety Week takes place from 20 to 26 June 2011.
Which? is getting involved by raising awareness of the Scandinavian-led trend to keep children rear-facing in cars for longer. Here we try to answer the key questions:
- Why should you keep your child rear-facing up to when they are 18kg (around four years old)?
- What are the pros and cons of doing so?
We've come a very long way since we began looking at child car seats, a full 45 years ago. In those days a child car seat was more like a modified domestic high-chair. Over the years we've seen the introduction of mandatory requirements for child seat crashworthiness (ECE R44.04), the invention of Isofix mounts, which aim to make seats easier to install and, most recently, the introduction of rear-facing seats designed to carry children until they reach around four years old.
Rear-facing Group 1 seats can offer good front crash protection
Why rear-facing?
Babies are required, by law, to travel rear-facing until they are at least 9kg (that's around 8 months), and Group 0+ seats are all rear-facing. Most experts recommend you try and keep them rear-facing for as long as possible, and with Group 0+ seats designed to last until the child is 13kg (12-15 months), this has been the recommended change point for many years. However, we know that many parents are tempted to change earlier - often with the encouragement of retailers eager to sell them the next seat.
The thinking behind rear-facing child car seats is based on two principles:
- In a rear-facing seat, the head, neck, and spine are kept fully aligned, and the crash forces are distributed over all of these body areas in contact with the full seat shell. This is clearly preferable to having the forces concentrated through a child seat harness.
- In a front crash, the child's head movement is controlled more effectively, reducing the chance of neck and spine injuries.
These principles apply particularly for babies, where their less-developed spine and neck muscles are unable to resist the movement of their relatively heavy head, thus leaving them more vulnerable to spinal injury, even in relatively minor accidents.
The idea of travelling rear-facing being safer in front crashes holds true for any occupant, since a well-designed seat will control anybody's head movement and spread the loads more effectively than a seatbelt or harness. While, at present, that isn't feasible for all, it can be facilitated for children older than would use a Group 0+ seat, which is why the Scandinavians have invented the rear-facing Group 1 seat.
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For the forward facing seat, the child's head movement is uncontrollable and the forces concentrated through the harness could cause harm to the child. For the rearward facing seat the head movement is controlled and the crash forces are spread over the whole area of the seat back in contact with the child meaning much less chance of injury.
Watch the video to see how typical examples of forward- and rear-facing Group 1 seats fare in a front crash.
Other issues to consider
While it's very important to protect children against injury in front crashes, other factors come into play when choosing a child seat.
Our tests are more rigorous than those required by law, including a 40mph front crash and an 18mph side crash, like those we expect adults to be protected in during the Euro NCAP crash tests. Uniquely, we also carry out a comprehensive ease-of-use assessment, involving ordinary parents fitting seats in real cars, then strapping real children in while our child car seat fitting experts observe.
We first looked at the Scandinavian seats several years ago, before you could buy them in the UK. Back then, even though we found they were mostly very good in front crashes, they were so difficult to install that our experts judged there was a very high probability they would be fitted incorrectly, potentially compromising safety.
When the seats became available to UK buyers - firstly through special importers, then through regular retailers - we have tested them as and when they've been launched.
Over the years, our findings have been mixed. Some provide really good front-crash protection but are hard to install, while others were compromised by being able to be used forward-facing - where protection was less good. And some fall short in the side-crash test, a particular issue for rear-facing Group 1 seats, where the weight of the child is concentrated away from the car's bench seat.
All the seats we've seen so far are quite bulky, so they may be hard to squeeze into smaller cars - and no rear-facing seat should be used in front of an active airbag.
Read our test results
But rear-facing group 1 seats are no different to other seats in one particular respect - you cannot tell how well they will protect you in crashes, simply by looking at them. The only way is to check out our unique test results.
We don't treat any seat differently to the others. If the maker says it can be used in a particular way, we test it that way. This doesn't come cheap, and each seat costs around £11,500 to test, but we believe this level of detail in our testing is essential in ensuring consumers can make an informed choice about buying something so important to child safety.
We we don't just tell you which seats are Best Buys, we also let you know which ones our experts say you should steer clear of.
To find out how safe the latest child car seats are, including the rear-facing Group 1 seats from Besafe, Brio, Britax, Recaro and Volvo, plus see full test results for over 100 others, follow the link below.
Already a Which? member? To see full test results and crash videos for all our rear-facing seat tests, click here.
Not a member yet? Sign up to Which? for just £1 and see full Which? test results, plus crash videos for the Britax Multi-Tech, Besafe iZi Combi X3 and iZi Kid X3, the Volvo Convertible and the Recaro Polaric - and many more.
