How many of you use 'Rear Facing' with your toddlers?

lauren_1

Can i just point out my favorite quote from this page.

http://www.rearfacing.co.uk/facts.php

Children in Sweden are extremely unlikely to die in car accidents. Between July 2006 and November 2007 not a single child under the age of 6 years old was killed in a car crash in Sweden (Source: VTI Sweden). According to the AA’s website, 205 children are injured in car crashes in the UK every year and 21 are killed.
With rearfacing group 1 car seats this statistic could change.

Not a single child killed in 15 months!!!, if you can read the whole page (I know it goes against what we are being told here but just watch it, please), If you do watch all the crash tests and still think that these seats detract from a toddlers life experience - then I honestly think you need you head examined.

MX5huggy

[FONT=&quot]Statistics! I love statistics

OK so there where 21 deaths in the UK out of 9 million children.

In Sweden there were none out of 1.5 million children (in an arbitrary 15 months there could of course have been 50 deaths in month 16 but we don't get told that).

If there were only 1.5 million children in the UK you would expect 3.5 deaths per year at the current rate.

Is the car seat the most important factor maybe the fact the Swedes have to have there headlights on all the time is more important or another number of reasons.

Of the 21 child deaths in the UK how many where of an age where they may have been in a rear facing seat? of those that were killed and were of the correct age for a rear facing seat how many were in a properly fitted front facing seat? and how many were not?[/FONT]

lauren_1

Well as you are determined to proove its all rubbish why don't you give some info that suggest's so?

Our infant mortality rate for RTA's is 23 times higher than scandinavian countries, and we only have 9 times as many children.

TiTheRev

Very good points MX5 :T

TiTheRev

We're not trying to prove its rubbish just make the discussion more two-sided. If there's a product out there that saves 21 childrens lives im all for it, but I cant see how the car seat that they only use in Scandinavia is the sole reason for that...?

lauren_1

Because they are tethered, anchored and reduce catapulting the childs head forward by facing rearwards until the childs bones have hardened - help to not internally decapitate the child .

How many of us have seen a top tether for a car seat??? We are just too far behind in the safety stakes.

U.K car seats are illegal in australia for this very reason.

If you intend to travel the the US with your U.K car seat it will be confiscated unless it complys with their safety laws.

TiTheRev

I can see what you're saying, but ISOFIX is tethered and anchored, and according to the child seat .org (or similar) website I was reading, Europe has far better safety reg's than the US and they are 2/3years behind our reg's???

And it still doesnt combat the rear impact accident that will force the childs head backward

MX5huggy

lauren_1 wrote: »

.... we only have 9 times as many children.

No we don't, Scandinavia (I will take to mean Sweden, Norway and Denmark)

Sweden has 1.5 milion Norway 1 millon Denmark (I can't find the figure but the total pop is about the same as Norway so I will say) 1 million

So 3.5 million in total. So we only have 2.6 times the number of children.

What are the RTA rates for Scandinavia vs the UK? is it just the case there are more RTA's in the UK so more will involve children.

WestonDave

As MX5 states we are already down to a factor of 3.5 difference and if the AA stats go up to 18 rather than 6 in the Swedish stats (which in any event are almost certainly a best period, rather than an average as in the AA stats) then the fact that 3 times the age range is included in our stats then brings the difference down to statistically insignificant. Even more so when you factor in all the other possible reasons for the difference like mileage per person per year, traffic speeds and density, road construction standards etc etc.

Here's one more thing to think about. The laws we have on child seats etc are rarely enforced - even watching a traffic cops programme the other night a doctor (yes!) caught doing 100mph on the motorway was not given any additional penalty for having an unrestrained toddler in the back of his car! If forcing kids into seats that makes them more likely to cause trouble leads to more parents chancing it for the sake of peace and quiet then upping our standards could actually be counter productive.

If you beleive these rear facing seats are safer then by all means work to make the evidence (and not just some dodgy stats) more widely known, but lets at least get to the baseline of every kid enforceably in a car seat before we start thinking about potentially counter productive gold standards.

sarahg1969

Both my boys were rear-facing till they were about 20 months old - first one in his Stage 0 car seat, and second one in his Britax First Class. I turned them round as soon as they reached the upper weight limit - they were both dainty. Both girls were turned round at around 14 months, as they were MUCH bigger.

We did look into getting a rear-facing seat for our Volvo (to use up to age 4), but the cost was prohibitive.