Halfords child seats

deanos

Im going to kiddicare tomorrow so will have a look at those ratchets, i suppose the problem with having them too tight is putting alot of pressure on the seat belts where they clip in ??

I can only use 1 type of car seat due to the way my seatbelts are the Britax First Class SI has alternative routing due to buckle crunch, i dont think there is anything safer to use ?

natalie1974

Do you have a Vauxhall ?

deanos

Yes Vectra 2001 the seat belt webbing is long in the back

Gemini

deanos wrote:

Im going to kiddicare tomorrow so will have a look at those ratchets, i suppose the problem with having them too tight is putting alot of pressure on the seat belts where they clip in ??

I can only use 1 type of car seat due to the way my seatbelts are the Britax First Class SI has alternative routing due to buckle crunch, i dont think there is anything safer to use ?

Just to let you know it is up to you how tight you make the seat using the ratchet.

natalie1974

deanos wrote:

Yes Vectra 2001 the seat belt webbing is long in the back

Vauxhall are notorious for have long selt belt lengths and the actual clip bit coming up very high on a child seat . :mad:

Think that the Britax First Class is your best option then as like you have said the have an alternative route for when dealing with buckle crunch .

RufusA

littlesos wrote:

A five point harness wouldn't have saved that childs life. It was the car seatbelt that failed, so ANY seat would have been ejected from the car.

Totally agree, whilst Kyle's tale is very moving, I'm always a little nervous making safety decisions based on an emotional response rather than looking at facts / tests.

From what I've read the difference between 3 point vs 5 point safety is margin provided both are correctly fitted. I believe only 0.05% of child fatalities in correctly fitted seats were caused by some form of equipment failure. The biggest danger is incorrectly fitted seats, or badly adjusted harnesses. I suspect with a 5 point fitted once the "novelty" has worn off there is much less likelihood of getting an older child to be happily buckled securely in it.

Parents worrying about seat safety should IMHO look more at how the seat in anchored than the number of harnesses. A sensible choice may be to change your primary child carrying vehicle to one that uses an ISOFIX system where there is considerably less chance of the seat being incorrectly fitted or becoming unexpectedly insecure.

Better still avoid the accident in the first place. Go on a driver training course to improve your skills. Make sure you adhere to keeping a "stopping distance" gap between you and the car in front. Make sure you fully concentrate when driving, this includes not doing the actions to "Hi-5" songs whilst steering with your knees!

Rufus.

natalie1974

Not everyone can afford to go out and buy a new car just so it has ISOFIX . Also another thing to bare in mind is that not all Isofix seats fit the Isofix points in cars . I have copied and pasted this from the Maxi Cosi website

"A car is only included on this car fitting list once:
• we have received official confirmation from the manufacturer stating that his IsoFix anchor points comply with the IsoFix norm of April 2004;
• we have successfully carried out fitting tests to check that the car seat can be installed properly and securely in the various models of the car make."

So based on that you would need to upgrade to a car 04 plate onwards .

RufusA

natalie1974 wrote:

Not everyone can afford to go out and buy a new car just so it has ISOFIX......

So based on that you would need to upgrade to a car 04 plate onwards .

Whilst I agree that not everyone can afford and ISOFIX compatible car, they don't have to be post '04 or expensive.

Picking a random Britax ISOFix seat, there's a list of compatible cars, a large number of which are over 5 years old, and some available used for under £1500! Personally I'd prefer to get an older car with compatible mounting points than something newer more fashionable:

Britax Duo Fit compatible cars

Examples include:

1997 Audi A3
2000 Nissan Micra
1998 Peugeot 206
1998 Renault Clio
1998 Seat Leon
1998 Skoda Octavia
1999 Toyota Yaris
1998 VW Bora

etc.

YMMV - Rufus.

bobdauilda

Another thing to remember to have in the car is a safety knife/scissors ( I belive there are actual tools available also)in case you have to cut the harnesses or seatbelts in a crash situation.... kids and adults can easily get trapped by belts in cars in these circumstances also.
That Kyle video is very moving and I hope nothing like that happens to any of us parents.

maplegirl2011

i wouldn't trust the britax lists completeley. they say my 2002 top of the range corsa has isofix as standard but it doesn't.