Why is rearward-facing travel safest for babies and young children? Children travelling forward-facing can be thrown forwards in a head-on collision.
That puts stress on the fragile head and neck, which can lead to serious injury. If your child is travelling rear-facing, the car seat spreads the forces across the whole back, protecting the delicate head and neck. What is the i -Size rear-facing car seat law? If you have chosen an i -Size car seat, your child must travel facing the rear until they are 15 months old by law. Find out more about i -Size car seats here or browse our collection.
This video helps explain. The bones running down a young child's neck and back are not yet solid bone they still have a lot of stretchy cartilage. A young child's head is also much heavier, in proportion to the body, than that of an older child or adult. So the head pulls forward with proportionately much more force on bones that are stretchier. As the bones stretch, they can force the spinal cord to stretch.
After it is stretched more than one-quarter of an inch, the spinal cord breaks. Riding in a rear-facing car seat helps reduce that risk by supporting the child's head.
The incidence of severe head and neck injuries for babies and toddlers is greatly reduced in rear-facing car seats. The additional support the rear-facing car seat provides to the head and neck reduces your child's chance of being injured or worse in a crash.
With the forward-facing child, the car seat isn't able to absorb as much of the energy, and more of it is transferred to the child—in particular to the head and neck as they pull away from the chest. The difference can be seen in a video comparing rear-facing and forward-facing car seats in a crash test.
Even if your child's legs are touching the seat back , or they cry when rear-facing, you should still keep your child rear-facing until they reach the rear-facing weight or height limit of the car seat.
Most convertible car seats have rear-facing weight limits of 35 to 50 pounds, so most kids can ride rear-facing until age three to five. Some children never like sitting in a car seat, and they may cry. However, being properly restrained makes it more likely that a child will survive a crash to cry another day. Many parents worry that their child will suffer broken legs or hips in a crash because the child's legs touch the seat back or look cramped when rear-facing.
In fact, there are more leg injuries when forward-facing, as the legs fly up and the feet go into the back of the front seat. As everything moves forward, compression forces into the hip and femur can break the leg of the forward-facing child.
Studies of real kids in real crashes shows that leg and hip injuries in rear-facing kids are very uncommon. When they do happen, it is in side impacts where another vehicle hits the child right where their leg is, breaking the leg. Rear-facing kids do not get hip or leg injuries from being scrunched up. In fact, during the instant of the crash, rear-facing kids become even more scrunched, with their legs pulling up into a cannonball position.
This is not a cause of injury. Kids often fuss because they are strapped in, not because they are rear-facing. To reduce fussiness in a rear-facing child:. When babies turn one, many parents think about moving past the infant car seat with the carrier handle. There are lots of options if you need a new car seat for a one-year-old!
Remember, advocates recommend that toddlers and preschoolers ride rear-facing until reaching the maximum weight or height for rear-facing in their convertible car seat, which for most kids is between three and five years of age. Back to story Comment on this project. Tell us what you think Thanks for adding your feedback. All rights reserved. Her shoulders still don't reach the height marker needed for her to be forward-facing. The second video, despite it being from the USA and not including the upper tether strap on the baby seat, clearly shows the difference the direction of the seat has on the child's spine.
Paediatric surgeon and director of trauma at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, Dr Warwick Teague, said he had seen far too many avoidable examples of children who were severely injured from being incorrectly restrained — or not restrained at all.
That can result in terrible bleeding or damage to the organs and we see examples of all of these in the children who come to see us at the Royal Children's. The laws in all Australian states and territories outline the minimum ages for children to be restrained in a vehicle up to the age of 16 years. Ms Teerds said Queensland laws were adjusted in based on national road rules, and new standard seats were then released. Well actually, it is about their height and age. So the law then becomes the minimum that you may [transition the child]," she said.
But if they still physically fit in a built-in harness seat and they haven't reached the height marker that says they're too big, leave them in it. Once a child has outgrown a forward-facing child restraint, they should use a booster seat with a lap-sash seat belt, until tall and old enough to fit properly into an adult seat belt.
Dr Rhodes says the gold standard is something called the five-step test to help you determine when it's the right time:. She said early transition out of a booster seat was the biggest area of concern, according to her team's research.
Restraint practices outlined in the national guidelines do not cover children with a disability or other additional needs, whether these are physical, medical, or behaviours of concern. Kidsafe recommends case-by-case assessment of these children and seat them according to Australian Standard Restraint of children with disabilities or medical conditions in motor vehicles.
According to new national guidelines released in March by Kidsafe Australia and NeuRA , there are other important recommendations to remember.
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