Which car seat: forward or rear facing?

Britax Maxway Car Seat

This week saw the time come for us to buy our 15 month old daughter her next car seat.  As a road safety professional, it is a decision that I, along with my wife, have put a considerable amount of time into making.  There are so many things to consider when buying a seat:  will our daughter fit in it well; will it fit in both our cars; is it easy enough to fit between the two cars; and, most importantly will it keep our precious daughter safe?

As part of our deliberations, one question came quickly to the forefront:  do we go for a forward or rear facing seat?  Here's my thoughts on the matter and why we went for the rear facing Britax Maxway.

What is Extended Rear Facing (ERF)?

Extended rear facing (ERF) is the term used for keeping a child in a rear facing car seat beyond the infant carrier (Group 0+) seat.  Group 0+ seats will mostly fit a child up to 13kg in weight, with Group 1 seats beginning to cater for children 9kg and above.  Now, I'm talking in weight rather than age here because that is how car seats are designed, and children of the same age will all be different weights.  Some people find this quite confusing so to give a rough estimate, a child will generally reach 9kg in weight between the age of 9-12 months and 13 kg at around 12-15 months.

ERF seats will cater for children from 9kg up to 18kg, approximately 4 years of age (Group 1), or up to 25kg, approximately 6 years of age (Group 1/2), depending on the seat.  This is instead of them going into a traditional forward facing seat with a harness.

What are the differences in terms of safety?

Frontal impacts are the most common type of crashes seen on the roads.  Anyone who has experienced even a minor crash will be able to tell you that, even wearing a seatbelt, you are thrown forwards considerably and this puts immense strain on your back and neck, often resulting in whiplash injuries or similar.  Now, as adults, our bone and muscle structure is fully formed and able to withstand much greater stresses than that of a child.  This video demonstrates this and explains how keeping a child rear facing reduces the risk of serious injury/death by more than 90%.

Why isn't it the law to keep children rear facing then?

In some countries, including Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark, it is already recommended that children are kept rear facing, and there are moves in the United States to follow suit, at least for children up to 2 years of age.  In the UK this is not the case, and there is no reason for it not to be, as the biggest factor is that most people are completely unaware of the issue.

What are the barriers to rear facing in the UK?

I have picked out 3 barriers here, there are probably more for some people but these are certainly the ones I found we had to overcome in our decision to buy rear facing for our daughter.

Awareness

As I've briefly touched on, awareness of ERF is a huge issue in the UK and, in my opinion, this is for two reasons:  1) there is simply not enough information disseminated to parents about the subject, which needs addressing at a national level; and 2) parents' reliance on their peers for information rather than professionals, and the unavoidable comparison with others' children.  I think this video, which I found courtesy of Osocio, sums this up to perfection.

Now, I have to say I fell foul of this awareness issue with our son, who is now nearly 4.  Even being a road safety professional, all be it only for a short time at that point, I had heard very little about ERF when it came to buying his Group 1 seat.  It was something we briefly discussed, but dismissed as we just didn't know enough about it.  There was also the issue that, at that time, there were very few ERF seats available in the UK, which brings me nicely on to the next barrier.

Availability

It seems absolutely crazy to me that one of the biggest suppliers of ERF car seats, Britax, is actually a British company!   For years they were making seats and exporting them to Scandanavia because British parents weren't interested, and those who were had to buy them from Scandanavian retailers!  Thankfully, this situation has much improved over the last couple of years and there are now approximately 15 ERF seats available to purchase in the UK from a number of manufacturers.  But, and this is quite a big but, there are not many places that stock them and can offer you advice on fitting.  I am very lucky that, living in East Anglia, I have the In Car Safety Centre at Milton Keynes, and advice clinics run by Road Safety Officers in Essex and Suffolk but we still ended up travelling over 400 miles in total going back and forward.  I'm well aware that other areas of the country are not as well served and would encourage anyone reading this who knows of other places to promote them as widely as possible.

Also important to note here that, as with all seats, not all models will fit all cars/children, so it important to try them out and see what works best for you.  We found we had a choice of three that fitted our two cars well, and plumped for the Maxway as our best option overall.

Cost

With the cheapest one we found starting just over £200, and prices rising to over £400 depending on the model you like best, going rear facing is certainly not the cheap option, so if funds are limited you're going to have to consider this one real hard!  My personal view is that there is no price anyone could put on my child's safety so it was well worth the money we paid for the Maxway.  

What needs to be done?

Well, the most important thing I want people to take away from this is that extended rear facing (ERF) is the way forward to reduce the number of young children killed or injured in car accidents on the UK's roads.  If you know people with young children, tell them about it before they buy their child's Group 1 seat (from around 9 months onwards), and support those who are already campaigning for change at a national level here in the UK.  I've included some links below to those who I have had contact with, but I'm sure there are plenty more.

I hope you found this useful/informative, and please share it if you did.

Useful links:
The Good Egg Guide to in-car Child Safety
Rear Facing: The Way Forward
The In Car Safety Centre
Safer Kids Rear Face UK
V & C Consultants

Road Casualty Increases in 2011: Is the Government to Blame?

In light of the recent Transport Select Committee report, it appears people have been pointing the finger at the government, and in particular the budget cuts, as a major factor in the rise in road casualties seen in 2011. In short, I don't think the coalition government can take any blame or credit for any changes in road casualties...at least not yet anyway! This is why:

Road casualties since 2007

I've not been in the field of road safety a particularly long time, about four and a half years in fact, but when I first started going into schools to talk to pupils about road safety, the number of people killed each year on the road was around 3,000 (2,946 in 2007 to be exact!). I remember this because one of our slides compared the number of people who died in road accidents in 2007 to the number who lost their lives in the Twin Towers following the tragic events of 9/11.

In the four and a half years since, we have seen that figure fall by over 1,000, even taking into account the slight rise from 1,850 in 2010 to 1,901 in 2011. That is an incredible achievement, and something anyone involved in road safety should be proud of, but it still means nearly 2000 people are losing their lives on the UK's roads every year, not to mention the 20,000+ other people who suffer serious injuries. But is this the full picture?

Should we just look at deaths on the road?

I mentioned seriously injured casualties in the previous paragraph because the answer is: no, we shouldn't! The difference between life and death in a road accident can come down to fractions of seconds or millimetres. In terms of casualty reduction, we want to see a fall in the number of all serious road accidents, and the less serious ones too! Considering the road death figures quoted above, we see a 35% reduction between 2007 and 2011. Including serious injuries in the figures we see a much shallower reduction of 19% between 2007 and 2011. However, I must point out that the classification of a serious injury is very broad, ranging from death more than 30 days after the accident to a minor fracture requiring hospital treatment, but that's a topic for another discussion.

It is also important to state that the figures for 2011 could also prove to be an anomaly, and the downward trend could resume in 2012 and 2013 - only time will tell.

What factors can influence a reduction/increase in road casualties?

There are a multitude of factors that can influence the number of road casualties, these include improvements in vehicle technology, the weather, the price of fuel, the economy, levels of police enforcement, changes in legislation, information and marketing campaigns, training and education interventions...the list goes on. My point is, it is almost impossible to pinpoint one specific factor on a national scale to explain why casualties have decreased significantly since 2003, but increased slightly in 2011. It is in this respect that I don't think we can pin the blame on the government, however what the Transport Select Committee have correctly highlighted is that the government may have taken their eye off the ball when it comes to road safety policy and the rise in 2011 could be the start of a worrying new trend that the government could influence through their policy decisions.

Up until 2010 the government had set targets for casualty reduction at a national level. In the new Strategic Framework for Road Safety, belatedly introduced in May 2011, national targets were removed, with emphasis placed on targets and priorities being set at a local level. This has come at the same time as local councils have had to make unprecedented budget cuts in line with reduced funding from central government. A recent report by the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) has highlighted that cuts to road safety budgets have been considerably higher than those to other council services.

I agree that there is likely to be a long term negative effect from this disinvestment in road safety and also agree with calls from the Transport Select Committee and road safety stakeholders nationally for the government to reinstate national targets for road safety and to give much stronger leadership on this matter.

While I stated at the beginning of this post that blame shouldn't be placed on the government for the rise in casualties in 2011, if they continue to take their current course of action (or inaction) ministers need to be prepared to shoulder at least some of the responsibility for their disinvestment. Therefore I would urge them to take heed of the recommendations of the Transport Select Committee, and other road safety stakeholders, and use the review of the strategy this September as an opportunity to take back the reins and show they are serious about road safety.