Thanks for the info on what seats have been able to accommodate older children. It will be useful for the future.
...and that future is pretty much now 🙂
I've not learnt Swedish or German but have managed to read quite a lot about rear facing vs front facing. I'm convinced rear facing as long as possible is best.
I'd just like to counter this....
I have to laugh, and my kids aren’t that old, but the new mum/dad ‘stuff’ has got insane.
Rear facing being found to best is hardly new. A paper was published in BMJ 10 years ago that concluded:
-Rear facing seats are safer than forward facing seats for children under 4 years old
-Parents and guardians should be advised to keep young children in rear facing seats for as long as possible
This was a study of studies, collating the data from them. It was published in the section specific to promoting and reviewing change in practice.
Came across this via Facebook:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/lucky-mums-stark-car-seat-16191878
But a paramedic and a traffic officer told Cara, 34, that if Albie had been front facing, it would have been "a very different scenario" - severe spinal injury or even internal decapitation where the spinal cord is severed from the force of the impact.
Photo are here:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10102849750843871&id=61007167
There is debate on the post about why a rear facing seat was more effective in a rear end shunt. There is one definite thing to note on this though. The rear of the car crumpling under the impact has pushed the backs of the rear seats forward. As the seat was rear facing it was not against the seat back like a forward facing one would be. I believe this did save the child from more severe injury.
Some people are debating whether a rear facing seat would have been any different to a front facing seat, had there not been this ingress into the passenger area (cell?). The rear shunt would push the stationary car forward. The shunted car then hit another stationary car. In this final impact, rear facing would be safer, as it would be the seat back and not a harness that slowed/stopped the child. However when the car was initially shunted, it would initially be similar to if the child was front facing in a forward travelling collision (but not quite the same as reversing, rear facing into a solid object). People are debating which of these two impacts had the greater force on the child. We only have the evidence that overall the child was relatively unharmed and that the forward facing driver had some injury. So perhaps rear facing was the safest for the child, even without the crumpling ingress at the rear.
I'd certainly not discount the opinion of a Police traffic officer lightly (I believe it was a Police traffic officer as a Highways Agency traffic officer would not be involved on an incident on an urban road).
Anyone wondering about the child seat, it's an Axkid Minikid and we bought one recently. My son seems very comfortable in it. A good seat regardless of the way it faces.
Yes we did with eldest (till 3yrs 10mnths) and will for youngest. We have a Besafe izi. Child just bends their legs (The seat shape promotes this anyway). The seat does take a large amount of room, we have it behind the passenger to give the driver the room. There is enough room in the front passenger seat for me at 6’2″ (Golf).
hang on.....are.....you.....me???
This is EXACTLY the same as us. I'm 6'2 and have ours in a Golf...
I can't see how a rear facing seat is better for a rear impact like that. In a properly fitted front facing seat there's no reason there's have been any spinal injuries at all. The reason rear facing is safer is because shunts from behind are rarer and less severe (on average) than frontal collisions
We've just moved our 32 month old from from rear to front facing (Britax swivel seat) to make things more sociable and to keep him entertained on longer journeys. He never complained about being squeezed in before despite being tallish. The one advantage of our car (Vauxhall signum) is that the stretched rear means there's plenty of room for him to be rear-facing behind 6'2 me in the driver's seat. The rest of the car is crap.
I can’t see how a rear facing seat is better for a rear impact like that
I don't think we can definitively say front facing is better either. There are two impacts, one when the car was shunted and then a final one when the shunted car hit the car in front. The forces act in different directions in both impacts. There are variables to consider, e.g. how soon after the rear shunt was the front collision? If the front collision occurred very shortly after the rear shunt, then it might be that the final impact was worse, or vice versa. Here I'm thinking, how much time the child would have to accelerate/decelerate in each direction?
In this exact case though, the boot crumpled into the back of the rear seats and pushed them forward. This would mean some of the rear impact forces would have been directly transferred to a forward facing seat. As the child's seat was rear facing it was away from the rear seat backs. Hence in this exact case, rear facing was better. I think this is why the Police came to the opinion they did.