baby car seat search

Woby_Tide

if it's a britax seat they have an online car seat checker, however the website also states that technically, if you have a 3 point belt then centre seat is actually safest with it being away from any side impact. But using their checker they seem to say that for Accord Estate none of their seats up to 9kg are recommended to go in the middle seat, I assume because surface isn't flat or somthing.

Also you say that you won't be able to use the seat as normal as you can't fit the base in the centre seat, surely that is dangerous not fitting seat as manufacturer recommends(or does the seat havea variety of different installation settings?)

stripeyfox

Just to add a general point regarding baby/child seats, please make sure you fit them correctly! If you are not sure, get help from the retailer and if they don't want to help, don't buy from them. When I worked at Halfords we offerred a car seat checking service (not sure if they still do) and nearly every single seat we saw was fitted incorrectly.
When fitted correctly, you should not be able to "wiggle" the seat at all, it should be as solid as you can get it.
Even if there is a little bit of play in the belt, that can make a critical life or death difference in an accident.

bylromarha

stripeyfox wrote:

Just to add a general point regarding baby/child seats, please make sure you fit them correctly! If you are not sure, get help from the retailer and if they don't want to help, don't buy from them. When I worked at Halfords we offerred a car seat checking service (not sure if they still do) and nearly every single seat we saw was fitted incorrectly.
When fitted correctly, you should not be able to "wiggle" the seat at all, it should be as solid as you can get it.
Even if there is a little bit of play in the belt, that can make a critical life or death difference in an accident.

But retailers don't seem to do their job as well as they could. Every retailer...including Halfords stripeyfox...would have happily sold me a Britax ISOFIX, even though Britax themselves recommended I didn't buy it. One manager even took it out to my car, told me it was the best fit of all 3 of the seats and started talking about the colour which would best match my car. I stopped the others before they got that far.

Surely a quick check of the Britax list of compatible cars (that I later saw next to where the seat was displayed in the shop) would tell them that they shouldn't sell me that seat. How many other Isofix seats have been sold to people like me who don't have compatible cars, because they trusted the "knowledgable" retailer? It's only because I researched this throughly that I found out I shouldn't buy Britax ISOFIX...how many other people don't do this and just walk into Mothercare and co to buy one on the advice of the sales person?

stripeyfox

I wasn't endorsing Halfords in any way; I stopped working for them about 7 years ago and even then the service could vary tremendously between stores. Some stores had no one who was competent at fitting seats so did not offer the service, fobbing customers off with the "its easy to fit" line.
I do know that we often used to get customers who'd purchase seats from Mothercare or similar stores and who'd been told by staff in those shops to bring it to Halfords to fit!
I was just speaking from my own experience and was in no way speaking up for or on behalf of the company - like most retailers they have could practice and bad and the service you receive largely depends on the person you deal with in store rather than any company policy.

IM

Woby_Tide wrote:

Also you say that you won't be able to use the seat as normal as you can't fit the base in the centre seat, surely that is dangerous not fitting seat as manufacturer recommends(or does the seat havea variety of different installation settings?)

We have a Graco car seat (part of one of their 'travel systems' - it was called a pram in my day...) which can be fitted in one of two ways.

You either have a base unit permanently in the car (and which has legs which rest against the floor of the car) and into which you simply 'clunk' the seat - or you strap the seat in to a seat belt in the traditional way.

The Graco website says:

Which motor vehicles are suitable for my car seat?
The AutoBaby 0+ MUST:

* be installed only in vehicles recognised by the manufacturer as accepting "Universal" car seats.
* be installed where there is a three-point safety belt system AND not where there is an inflatable
air bag positioned.
* be installed rear facing, ie the baby is travelling backwards.
* always follow the fitting instructions carefully, a spare set can be downloaded from the downloads section of the website.

I'll need to check to see how flat the middle seat is. As Woby_Tide says, the middle seat is the best place to be in terms of side impact - though of course this does mean that one of the other two end up taking the hit for the little fella....