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Rear Facing Car Seats
A babyworld guide
Buy a Rear Facing Car Seat from the
babyworld shop
At babyworld we have highly trained and experienced Car
Seat fitters and the most important thing for us has always been not just
selling you any old car seat but ensuring that the seat fits properly
in your car and that parents are actually comfortable fitting the seats
themsleves. 
There has been a lot of information and even hype put about
by the media recently. In this article we hope to give you clear unbiased
presentation of the facts as we see it and give you some clear and comprehensive
guidelines.
This is all scary stuff and we all hope that these things
will never happen and to most of us it won't. A proper child restraint
system (car seat) is a legal requirement and they really do save lives.
We may have tooled around without car seats and even without
seat belts in years gone by but things have changed over the years. Cars
are faster and there's a lot more of them around and we've learnt a great
deal about how to protect ourselves should the worst happen.
Things you should know
- rear facing car seats are available in this country - we have them
at babyworld (Oxfordshire). Search on google to find somewhere near
you if you want to try some out. Manufacturers are (painfully) slowly
introducing rear facing car seats to the UK market. At babyworld we
have rear facing car seats from Recaro,
Britax,
Brio
and Be
Safe.
- The Safest car seat is the one which fits into your car the best.
You the owner of the seat must be comfortable fitting this seat into
your car as it is your responsibility not the retailers.
- Excluding other factors rear facing car seats are safer than foward
facing car seats.
However an incorrectly fitted rear facing car seat is never safe.
" The evidence shows that it is safer for children to travel rearward
facing for as long as possible, although that does not mean forward facing
seats are dangerous." Duncan Vernon, Royal Society for the Prevention
of Accidents.
Crash Forces
Currently around 75% of all crashes involve some sort of frontal element.
e.g. you will hit something or something will hit you on the front bumper.
Dr Watson writing in the British Medical Journal made the following points.
"Rear facing seats cradle a child in an impact with any frontal component,
align the head, neck and spine, spreading the crash forces over all these
body areas. In a forward facing car seat a child's body is held back by
the straps while the head keeps moving forwards, and the relatively large
head mass and differences in the cervical spine in young children can
lead to excessive stretching of the spinal cord"
It is fair to say in most accidents your child will be safer in a rear
facing car seat. In fact the same goes for you and I as adults when travelling
too. Ever wondered why the cabin crew on most major airlines sit with
their back to the pilot on take-off and landing?.
However this advice must be tempered with the view that your car seat
must fit correctly and safely in your car. You also need to make sure
that you have not cramped either the driver or the front passenger. If
you have had to slide the front seats all the way forward in order to
accommodate a rear facing car seat in the back then you may have compromised
the safety of the occupants in the front.
Babyworld top tips
- A car seat that can be fitted perfectly safely in one car may not
fit safely in another car. Ensure that you buy a seat that will fit
in all the cars you use. Most manufacturers provide a car seat fitting
guide on their websites which may help you establish that the seat is
compatible with your car.
- Use whichever car seat you have for as longs as possible. Do not move
your child to a group 1 car seat until they have reached the upper weight
/ height limits for the group 0+ seat. Most group 1 seats are suitable
from 9kg to 18kg. However Group 0+ seats are suitable up to 13kg so
you should use it until your baby is 13kg. Get your money's worth from
your Group 0+ seat.
- Car seats are tested for weight and height not age. All babies are
different and crash test dummies do not have ages. The age ranges associated
with Car seat groups are only a guide.
- Height as also very important if your baby's head stick's out of the
top of a Group 0+ seat then the seat will not give proper head protection
in the event of an accident. It doesn't really matter if your babys
feet touch the back of your car seat as they will be fine in an accident.
It is your baby's head, neck and spine that we must protect at all costs.
Think of your new born car seat like it's a crash helmet.
- Fit your child firmly into the seat. There is no point in attaching
the seat firmly into the car if the child is not also firmly fitted
to the seat.
Where to next
 
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