Rear facing child seats are 5 times safer....
Discussion
We have one of the BeSafe Izi Combo X3 rear facing seats. It's a great seat BUT no good in a 1-series as the rear seat of the car is angled too much so when the rear facing seat is put on, not matter how much you adjust the seat's incline my daughter still has her head leaning down when she's asleep. I'm getting rid of the car rather than the seat. Only problem is lugging the seat with me to look at prospective purchases! I'd rather have her in the safest seat possible than satisfy my whim for rear wheel drive although hopefully an E90 or E60 will have better angled seats otherwise bye bye BMW!
mekondelta said:
We have one of the BeSafe Izi Combo X3 rear facing seats. It's a great seat BUT no good in a 1-series as the rear seat of the car is angled too much so when the rear facing seat is put on, not matter how much you adjust the seat's incline my daughter still has her head leaning down when she's asleep. I'm getting rid of the car rather than the seat. Only problem is lugging the seat with me to look at prospective purchases! I'd rather have her in the safest seat possible than satisfy my whim for rear wheel drive although hopefully an E90 or E60 will have better angled seats otherwise bye bye BMW!
Yeh, the besafe is massive, thats one of the reasons I went for the Britax!Instead of changing the car, maybe have a look at the Britax one?
Some points about rear facing:
1. Whether or not a seat will fit is dependant on the height of the person sitting in the front seat. It's no use someone saying a seat will fit in a particular car if they're 4'6".
2. Kids are rear facing from birth so they're used to it, if they start moaning tie a DVD or some other plastic kiddy crap to your centre arm/head rest. They all go through stages of hating their car seat regardless of orientation.
3. Rear seats not fitting is an excellent excuse to go car shopping.
4. Some Rear facing exponents may seem judgemental of parents who choose fwd facing, can't speak for others but I'm not, we're rear facing in one car, fwd in the other. Whatever you choose is better than nowt.
1. Whether or not a seat will fit is dependant on the height of the person sitting in the front seat. It's no use someone saying a seat will fit in a particular car if they're 4'6".
2. Kids are rear facing from birth so they're used to it, if they start moaning tie a DVD or some other plastic kiddy crap to your centre arm/head rest. They all go through stages of hating their car seat regardless of orientation.
3. Rear seats not fitting is an excellent excuse to go car shopping.
4. Some Rear facing exponents may seem judgemental of parents who choose fwd facing, can't speak for others but I'm not, we're rear facing in one car, fwd in the other. Whatever you choose is better than nowt.
Edited by DJFish on Monday 13th January 20:45
DJFish said:
2. Kids are rear facing from birth so they're used to it, if they start moaning tie a DVD or some other plastic kiddy crap to your centre arm/head rest. They all go through stages of hating their car seat regardless of orientation.
Excellent idea - buy the safest seat possible then add some solid objects to fly around in the event of an accident!oldcynic said:
Excellent idea - buy the safest seat possible then add some solid objects to fly around in the event of an accident!
If you look in most kiddy wagons there's about half a ton of s
te already rattling around inside, toys, towels, pre-chewed food & tippy cups containing curdled milk, twigs, sea shells & countless half full packs of baby wipes.If I'm ever hungry, thirsty or need to wipe my hands I just have to brake suddenly & something'll turn up.
DJFish said:
If you look in most kiddy wagons there's about half a ton of ste already rattling around inside, toys, towels, pre-chewed food & tippy cups containing curdled milk, twigs, sea shells & countless half full packs of baby wipes.
If I'm ever hungry, thirsty or need to wipe my hands I just have to brake suddenly & something'll turn up.
Ain't that the truth, and mucky hand marks all over the windows and bodywork te already rattling around inside, toys, towels, pre-chewed food & tippy cups containing curdled milk, twigs, sea shells & countless half full packs of baby wipes.If I'm ever hungry, thirsty or need to wipe my hands I just have to brake suddenly & something'll turn up.
I've had projectile vomit on a few trips - once without spare clothes for us or for the little in - lesson learnt you need to carry so much stuff with you and you can never have a "nice" clean car ever again
DJFish said:
oldcynic said:
Excellent idea - buy the safest seat possible then add some solid objects to fly around in the event of an accident!
If you look in most kiddy wagons there's about half a ton of ste already rattling around inside, toys, towels, pre-chewed food & tippy cups containing curdled milk, twigs, sea shells & countless half full packs of baby wipes.If I'm ever hungry, thirsty or need to wipe my hands I just have to brake suddenly & something'll turn up.
We've normally got a roof box on which is great for preventing any possibility of luggage causing an injury - although it's there as a consequence of using the boot seats. £19 off ebay just to try the concept of our boot being on the roof, thinking I'd buy something smarter if it works. It's still there 2 years later.
DoubleSix said:
oldcynic said:
Welshbeef said:
What's wrong with the rear facing Volvo boot seats?
Nothing at all up to age 8 or 10 depending on their rate of growth. They love waving at the drivers behind 
DoubleSix said:
oldcynic said:
Welshbeef said:
What's wrong with the rear facing Volvo boot seats?
Nothing at all up to age 8 or 10 depending on their rate of growth. They love waving at the drivers behind 
Looks more like a safety cage than a crumple zone to me. I love the way it bends around the rear axle absorbing the energy
Don't suppose you watched Motorway Cops on BBC 1 last night did you?
Whilst a low speed accident may result in the above droopy Volvo I think you'll find a classic highspeed motorway slam or stationary NSL rear impact will do a little more damage.
Doubt you'll find many who attend such accidents sticking the kids in the boot!
I'm not sure anyone has stated it is?
Personally, to me, all seven seaters look like an exercise in stupidity. Didn't 5 Gear or one of the others do a show around these vehicles and illustrate that putting the most valuable cargo in the boot is plain dumb.
Some of those seven seater family wagons have the kids heads a matter of inches from the rear screen....
Personally, to me, all seven seaters look like an exercise in stupidity. Didn't 5 Gear or one of the others do a show around these vehicles and illustrate that putting the most valuable cargo in the boot is plain dumb.
Some of those seven seater family wagons have the kids heads a matter of inches from the rear screen....
Some common sense stuff from the interweb:
"To date, there is no test to see how well occupants of a third-row seat would fare if their car was hit from behind. At first glance, it appears there is little protection for them. The seats are usually placed where the cargo area is, so there's very little in the way of a buffer zone - or crumple zone, as the experts like to call them.
Also, curtain airbags, which protect an occupant's head in a side impact, don't extend to the third row of seats on some popular seven-seaters, including the Ford Territory and Holden Captiva.
A controversial crash test in Europe recently raised doubts about how well some cars protect occupants in the event of a rear-end impact.
Respected German automotive magazine AutoBild conducted two rear-end crash tests on a small city runabout and compact people-mover and found a high-speed accident could have dire consequences for passengers sitting in the rear seats.
AutoBild bought two cars for the tests - the small Toyota iQ and a Renault Grand Scenic family people-mover. The cars weren't singled out because they had shown weaknesses in previous crash-testing procedures.
In fact, both had earned five-star ratings in front and side impacts conducted under the European NCAP crash test program. But neither has any obvious rear crumple zones.
Compact people-movers, such as seven-seat soft-roaders, leave only a small cargo area forward of the rear hatch.
For the magazine test, the Renault, filled with seven dummies, was placed about one metre behind a station wagon and then hit at 64 kilometres an hour by a Mercedes ML, a heavy luxury off-roader. It penetrated some 30 centimetres into the rear of the Scenic, inflicting damage to the dummies in the rear seat.
A medical consultant judged that three of the Renault's passengers received eight separate different impacts that exceeded safety standards.
Particularly bad were head, neck and torso impacts for third-row passengers, who could expect brain injury and haemorrhaging, vertebrae and intervertebral disc fractures and rib fractures with the possibility of organ penetration. It wasn't a great outcome for a five-star car hit from behind at a speed considered normal on many suburban roads."
"To date, there is no test to see how well occupants of a third-row seat would fare if their car was hit from behind. At first glance, it appears there is little protection for them. The seats are usually placed where the cargo area is, so there's very little in the way of a buffer zone - or crumple zone, as the experts like to call them.
Also, curtain airbags, which protect an occupant's head in a side impact, don't extend to the third row of seats on some popular seven-seaters, including the Ford Territory and Holden Captiva.
A controversial crash test in Europe recently raised doubts about how well some cars protect occupants in the event of a rear-end impact.
Respected German automotive magazine AutoBild conducted two rear-end crash tests on a small city runabout and compact people-mover and found a high-speed accident could have dire consequences for passengers sitting in the rear seats.
AutoBild bought two cars for the tests - the small Toyota iQ and a Renault Grand Scenic family people-mover. The cars weren't singled out because they had shown weaknesses in previous crash-testing procedures.
In fact, both had earned five-star ratings in front and side impacts conducted under the European NCAP crash test program. But neither has any obvious rear crumple zones.
Compact people-movers, such as seven-seat soft-roaders, leave only a small cargo area forward of the rear hatch.
For the magazine test, the Renault, filled with seven dummies, was placed about one metre behind a station wagon and then hit at 64 kilometres an hour by a Mercedes ML, a heavy luxury off-roader. It penetrated some 30 centimetres into the rear of the Scenic, inflicting damage to the dummies in the rear seat.
A medical consultant judged that three of the Renault's passengers received eight separate different impacts that exceeded safety standards.
Particularly bad were head, neck and torso impacts for third-row passengers, who could expect brain injury and haemorrhaging, vertebrae and intervertebral disc fractures and rib fractures with the possibility of organ penetration. It wasn't a great outcome for a five-star car hit from behind at a speed considered normal on many suburban roads."
Agreed, which is why Autobild included one in their test. However a supermini generally serves as a city car doesn't it. They aren't generally loaded up with two or three generations of the same family to hit the motorway and go visit grandma or spend a week in France.
I wouldn't have a supermini but I think they are slightly more fit for purpose in this context.
I wouldn't have a supermini but I think they are slightly more fit for purpose in this context.
Edited by DoubleSix on Wednesday 15th January 10:31
Interesting to read this - we've recently gone through the same process for our 18 month old and we've ended up with a BeSafe rear-facing seat, mostly for reasons mentioned above.
However, I'm 6'2" tall and there's no way in a million years it will fit behind me in our BMW 3er Touring (E91 if you're interested)... With a view to a second coming along shortly (and therefore removing the option of just putting the seat on the passenger side instead) I've started looking for other cars... any excuse and all that.
Anyway, I took the seat along to try in both a Mercedes E-Class estate and a Discovery, both of which boast very generous rear legroom, and there was no way in the world it would fit with the front seat anywhere close to where it needs to be to accommodate my legs.
I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board - be warned, if you're even a little bit above average height, check VERY carefully that a rear-facing seat will fit. Goodness knows how the Swedes (statistically among the tallest people in Europe, and for whom rear facing is law) cope with anything less than a LWB Jag XJ...
However, I'm 6'2" tall and there's no way in a million years it will fit behind me in our BMW 3er Touring (E91 if you're interested)... With a view to a second coming along shortly (and therefore removing the option of just putting the seat on the passenger side instead) I've started looking for other cars... any excuse and all that.
Anyway, I took the seat along to try in both a Mercedes E-Class estate and a Discovery, both of which boast very generous rear legroom, and there was no way in the world it would fit with the front seat anywhere close to where it needs to be to accommodate my legs.
I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board - be warned, if you're even a little bit above average height, check VERY carefully that a rear-facing seat will fit. Goodness knows how the Swedes (statistically among the tallest people in Europe, and for whom rear facing is law) cope with anything less than a LWB Jag XJ...
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