While judith and i were sifting through the jungle of child seat options, we realized that choosing the right seat is at least as important as choosing the child seat itself.
Our instinct would have been to place our child somewhere in the back seat. you know this from most of your friends and acquaintances. But where exactly does a baby or toddler sit most safely in the car?
What is the safest seat for children in a car?? And which seat is the best?
Nanu? Should both questions not have one and the same answer? No. At least not if you look at it from a family perspective: because the safest place in the car is actually the middle seat in the backseat. This is what the national highway traffic safety administration has determined. Compared to other seats, the risk of fatal injury is 27% lower in the middle of the back seat (you can find articles on this in the HAZ and in the spiegel). Personally, this realization really surprised me. I had originally assumed that the middle position would have been much more dangerous due to the lack of a three-point seat belt and the possibility of flying right through the car and windshield in a head-on collision. Learned something again!
So the middle is the safest. But it is an extremely impractical seating position for families. In many models, a child seat in the middle usually cannot be fastened very well. This is mainly due to the elevations in the seat cushioning, which you will find in the middle of the rear seat in many models. It’s also much more awkward to put a child in a child seat in the middle of the back seat. do this for a few months and your back will thank you.
In this respect, the right rear position looks much better, which is why this is also our favorite. Another safety aspect also comes into play here. With this seating position, your child – or you lift your child – always gets in and out of the car on the curb side and not on the road side.
Another safety-related argument is that, statistically speaking, other drivers are most likely to crash into the driver’s side of the car. In this case the passenger side has the most distance to the impact. If you summarize the points of safety and application, everything speaks for the right seat on the back seat – and if you help a little, you can restore the missing direct eye contact to the child with a baby back seat mirror*. We have the model of TOPELEK * and are totally satisfied with it.
If the right rear seat is so great, then the right front seat – i.e. the front passenger seat – must be a good option for transporting the small passengers from A to B in a safe and practical way. Unfortunately this is not quite the case.
child on passenger seat – forbidden?
Officially it is allowed to place your child right next to you. Furthermore, while researching this article, I did not find any meaningful statistics that advise against installing a child seat on the front passenger seat. However, all experts, such as the ADAC, urgently advise against it. One of the main reasons is the constant distraction to which you as the driver are exposed. In addition, it can always happen that your offspring peppering his toys through the area. This has fewer consequences in the back seat than in the passenger seat.
At the latest with reboarder or child seat then but because of the size of the seat the argument of the view obstruction takes effect. Our reboarder*, for example, is considered one of the safest available and is therefore quite bulky. Therefore, it would significantly restrict the view of the right side mirror.
In any case, your child should never drive a car like this ©tim mossholder
Initially, we often installed the baby car seat on the passenger seat when we were traveling alone with the offspring. Judith and I had so the feeling to have our new family member in this way better in view. This variant also seemed safer to us than always having to look backwards. But everyone has to decide for himself. Whether we would do it again with the knowledge of today, I dare to doubt.
Airbag and child seat
If you still decide to let your offspring ride in the front, you must (!) you have to turn off the airbag. Otherwise, even a minor bump can kill your child by triggering the airbag.
I write this deliberately so clearly. A deploying airbag will hit the child seat with such force that it can break your child’s neck. To describe the forces that are released in this situation, imagine you have to inflate a normal air mattress. Each of you has certainly been on the verge of a hemorrhage and knows how long it takes until the part is filled to the brim. an airbag has about the same volume of air as your air mattress, modern airbags with 120 liters sometimes up to twice as much. These 60 to 120 liters are filled with air in an impact in less than 50 milliseconds. by the way, you need 100 milliseconds for a blink of an eye. These numerical games illustrate the force with which an airbag can impact a child seat in the worst case scenario.
Conclusion
The back seat is the safest choice for children in child seats. even a second little passenger in a child seat is safer in the back seat than in the front passenger seat. But then it gets pretty cozy in most cars. The third seat in the middle degenerates with two child seats in almost every car to a pure luggage rack (in which car you have up to six (yes, six) children)!) to accommodate child seats in the back seat, we tell you in our category family cars. Take a look& ).
For us it was therefore quickly clear which place our son gets in the car. He drives with a safe feeling on the right back seat. Of course, I can’t always give him his toy or something to drink right away. However, we gladly accept this disadvantage for the plus in safety.
I hope my article has helped you and you are now a little smarter& I wish you in any case all the time a good and safe ride with your little ones.