Car Seat Safety

Car seats are expensive; space in vehicles can be a problem and not everyone is aware of the risks. Information about car seats can be confusing and overwhelming at times. The following information aims to help providers working in early years settings to make sure that the children they care for are as safe as possible when travelling in cars on our roads.

Encouraging road users to behave in a way that keeps everyone safe is one of the pillars of our Vision Zero Strategy, the ambition that by 2040 no one will be killed or suffer serious injuries on roads in Leeds.

Facts about in car safety

• Between 2018 and 2022, 105 people lost their life and 1,777 people were seriously injured as a result of collisions on roads in Leeds.
• In a crash, someone is twice as likely to die if they are not wearing a seatbelt. Seatbelts save hundreds of lives each year.
• Failure to wear a seat belt (or child restraint) is one of the “fatal five”. These are offences identified by the Police as the ones most likely to contribute to a fatal or serious road traffic collision.
• Seatbelts are designed for adults and don't fit children properly or babies at all. Children are more prone to injury than adults, so they need specially designed car restraints.
• An unrestrained child can be killed in an impact at a speed as low as 5mph.
• Properly fitted car seats help prevent children from being thrown about inside vehicles in a collision or ejected if there's a crash.
• According to ROSPA (The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents), forward facing seats that help to position the seat belt correctly, reduced the risk of injury by 77% for children aged 4 to 10 years.
• A recent Swedish study found that rearward facing child seats are even more effective, and that rear facing seats reduced the likelihood of injury by 90% compared with being unrestrained (Han Gan, et al - Car seats: Facing backward is the way forward 2018)
• Drivers risk a hefty £500 fine if they are caught using an unsuitable or incorrectly fitted car seat.

Checking seats in Leeds
Each year Leeds City Council’s Road Safety team hold community car seat checking events. In November 2023 we visited six shopping centres in Leeds with our expert partner Good Egg Safety.
We checked 169 child car seats and found 46% with minor errors, but worryingly 14% of seats had major faults. One seat was found to be dangerously incompatible with both the vehicle and child.

The four checks
There are four essential checks you should always make before buying, fitting, and using a child car seat: is it legal, does it fit the car, does it fit the child and is it fitted correctly in the vehicle?

1. Check if it’s legal

• Is the seat compliant with current safety standards such as the United Nations E mark or BS Kitemark? Some seats from America or Australia are not compatible with UK cars and should not be used. Look for the 'E' mark label on the seat and check it is suitable for the child’s weight / height and stage of development.
• By law all children travelling in the front or rear seat of a vehicle must use the correct child restraint until they are 12 years old or 135cms tall (which ever they reach first). You can choose a child car seat based on a child’s height or weight.
  Children over 12 years or more than 135cm tall, must use the adult seat belt and it's the driver's responsibility to ensure that children aged 14 or under are restrained correctly. You must never use a rear-facing baby seat in the front of the car that has a working airbag.
• Safety experts, including Which?, recommend you use a child car seat for children up to 150cm/4ft 11in. This is the legal requirement in Ireland, Germany, and France.

There are only a few situations where you are exempt from using a car seat:

• If there are already two occupied child seats in the car and a third won't fit, you are allowed to put the biggest child in the middle and use the adult seat belt. This only applies if there are three children in the car and the other two seats are being used. If you don't have all the children with you, then the biggest child must use one of the empty car seats, or one of them must be removed and replaced with one suitable for that child. A child must never sit in the back next to an empty car seat, no matter how short the journey.
• Travelling in a taxi or minicab. If you travel in a taxi without a car seat, children aged three and over must use an adult seat belt, and babies and toddlers under three must be carried on your lap. You must wear the seat belt and hold the child in your arms, never put the seat belt around both of you. There are lightweight belted seats available, and these should be used if possible.
• If you own a very old car that doesn't have seat belts fitted (pre1980s models), children are legally allowed to travel unrestrained in the back. If you have children and a car without rear seat belts, you really should consider buying a newer car.
• If it's an emergency and it's a short journey and it's in someone else's car (all three must apply). An 8-mile round trip to pick up a child from school when you accidentally left the car seat in your partner’s vehicle is not an acceptable exception.

Travelling abroad
Laws for child seats aren't the same in every country. Some places require a child to be taller than 135cm to use an adult belt. Read up before you travel and if you are using a hire car in the UK or abroad, check if a car seat is provided and that you get the fitting instructions.

2. Check it fits the car

• Frustratingly, not every car seat fits every vehicle. If you’re buying from a high street retailer, they should usually be able to advise you, but mystery shopper exercises have shown that the information about car seats is not always correct, so it’s always worth double checking.
• Check online with the seat or vehicle manufacturer and consider if it will be used in more than one car. It’s important to know whether the seat will fit every car in which it will be used.
• ROSPA provide a handy compatibility guide which is a good place to start.

3. Check it fits the child
There are numerous types of car seat and many different manufacturers. The importance thing is to do your research and choose one that is right for the weight, height and developmental stage of the child who will be using it.

i-Size

• The idea behind i-Size (or Regulation R129) is that eventually all car seats will fit all cars.
• Instead of using a child’s weight to determine a car seat, you choose an i-size seat based on the height of a child, making it easier to see when it's time to move up.
• i-Size uses a new way of crash-testing car seats including a new side-impact test which has improved protection for side and front impacts, with a focus on the prevention of head and neck injuries.
• i-Size seats are rearward facing and only compatible with Isofix cars (some seats labelled as i-Size have the option for belted installation, but they are not strictly i-Size).
• i-Size will run alongside R44 (the regulation that governs weight-based car seats) for now, but car seats approved to the older regulation do not have to pass a side-impact crash test, so while it may not be necessary to upgrade your current seat immediately, it's worth considering an i-Size seat in future.

Booster seats

• Booster seats raise a child to a height suitable for use with an adult seat belt.
• They can be used in the front or rear of the car, but it is safer to put them in the back, especially if there’s a passenger airbag in the front.
• Backless booster cushions are being phased out. Since February 2017 manufacturers can't produce backless boosters for children less than 125cm tall or who weigh less than 22kg. This is because they’re not considered as safe.
• The lack of back and side wings reduces side and head protection, leaving children vulnerable to injuries, particularly in side impacts.
• They make it more difficult to position the diagonal strap of a three-point adult seat belt correctly.
• Backless boosters don't break the law if they meet existing safety standards, but to give a child the best protection it's best to use high back booster seats.

Combination seats

• Combination or multi-group seats may be more economical as they can last a child for several years, and some allow the child to be rearward facing for longer, which has been proven to be safer.
• However, you may have to make compromises, for example, you may not get a good fit at one or more of the stages of the child’s development. Some combination seats are very upright for younger babies and don’t have a great recline, which may not be so bad if it will only be used for short trips, but not so good if you make regular long journeys.
• If you buy a seat that you hope will last you 6 or more years, think about whether you’ll be changing your vehicle before you change the seat and if it will still fit a newer car. Will parts of the seat go missing? Will you know how to adjust it to the next stage when the time comes in a few years?

Rearward facing seats

• Recent research suggests that rearward facing is the safest option for babies and young children. This is because the most serious impact, collisions tend to be head on.
• A baby’s head is large and heavy in relation to its body and the neck muscles are weaker. Rearward facing seats help to dissipate the forces resulting from a collision and better protect a child’s head and neck.
• Don’t rush to sit your child forward facing. They have not outgrown a rearward facing seat until their head reaches the top of the seat.
• Children are very flexible, their bones don't start to calcify until around 3 years, and after that their joints remain much more mobile than in adults. Most children are usually happy to sit in a rearward facing seat in a cross-legged position.
• Regulation R44 covers seats that are manufactured based on a child’s weight. In these seats, there is an option for the child to travel forward facing from 9kg (around nine months of age). The newer i-Size seat (regulation R129) requires the child to travel rear facing until they are over 15 months old. An extended rear facing seat allows a child to travel rear facing for longer until they are 105cm tall (around 4 years)
• In some European countries, it is now law that children must travel rear facing until they reach four years of age, but most car seats on the UK market are forward facing and parents and carers often switch to forward facing as soon as they are able.
• You must never use a rear-facing baby seat in the front of the car that has a working airbag.

Second hand seats

Car seats are a big expense, but from a safety point the use of second-hand seats are not recommended because:

• they may no longer be legal
• they may not fit your car or child
• they may have been involved in a collision and therefore have sustained damage which you cannot see and so will not perform properly
• some parts may be missing such as inserts, chest pads, tether straps, fitting instructions

If you  are confident that you know the history of the seat, it’s legal, hasn’t been involved in a collision, will fit your car and child, and it has all the parts and instructions, then you could consider a good condition second hand seat, especially if it is being passed on from a family member or reliable friend. Don’t accept a seat where you don’t know its history.

Moving up to the next stage

• Don’t rush to move a child up to the next stage of seat once they reach the minimum weight / height for it.
• From a safety point of view, it's usually better that they stay in the existing seat until they have fully outgrown it (reached the maximum weight/ height restrictions).
• Just because you can legally move a child to the next stage of seat it doesn’t mean it is the safest option.

Children with additional needs

• Children with additional needs must use child car seats and seatbelts.
• If there’s a medical reason why a child can’t use a child car seat or seatbelt, a doctor can decide whether to issue an exemption on medical grounds, and in some cases, a specially adapted child car seat may be necessary.
• You should never modify the child’s seat, without seeking expert advice. William Merritt Disabled Living Centre can offer practical help and information.

4. Check it’s correctly fitted

• Always consult the instruction manual to check how to fit the seat
• There are lots of helpful YouTube videos from seat manufacturers and other trustworthy sources.
• If the car headrest pushes the child car seat forward you can remove or reverse it, but don't be tempted to adapt the car seat to make it more comfortable, as this may prevent it working in a crash.
• Make sure baby seats have the carry handle in the right position which is usually in the up posotion, rarely behind the baby seat.
• Some seats have a QR code fixed on the side so that you can always double check when you are out and about.
• It’s also really important to keep the seat fitting instructions somewhere safe.
  - Everyone who will be using the seat needs to know how to fit it correctly. The most common fitting errors are:
  - Incorrect seat for height/weight of child
  - Harness tension incorrect
  - Harness position incorrect
  - Child head restraint incorrectly fitted
  - Harness twisted
  - Harness affected by clothing
  - Seat facing the wrong way

It’s more common to find seats incorrectly fitted where they are secured using an adult seat belt, but if done correctly, a seat secured using a seat belt should perform just as well as one using Isofix.

Isofix

• Most newer cars have Isofix fittings. This is an attachment system that uses metal bar connectors built into the chassis of a car to connect to the child car seat.
• Isofix reduces the potential for fitting mistakes but it’s not infallible.
• The connectors are often hidden within the car's seat padding. Once they are clicked together with the anchorage points, the seat is secured by a third point, either a support leg which is built into the seat or seat base, or a top tether (a strap that attaches to a mount somewhere behind the rear of the seat). These stop the car seat tipping forward in an accident.
• Most Isofix fittings have a visual indicator that changes colour to show when it is correctly attached.  

The two-finger test

• Regularly check that the harnesses and impact shields are adjusted properly.
• On every journey the car seat harness should be tight enough to restrain the child, but not so tight as to cause damage to developing bones and internal organs.
• You should only be able to get two fingers between the harness and the child's collarbone. and you shouldn't be able to pinch the webbing together.
• It’s important that everyone using the seat knows how to adjust it.

Clothing 

• Be wary of bulky clothing. It can cause babies to overheat and make it very difficult to fit harnesses correctly.
• Bulky clothing can also compress in the event of a collision (think of a vacu-pack that sucks the air out). If clothing compresses, harnesses can become loose, and the child can be flung out of the seat.
• It is better to use a blanket if you think they will be too cold in the car or use layers of clothing rather than thick snow suits.

Looking after your car seat

• Check your car seat fittings regularly to make sure nothing has moved, unlocked, or loosened.
• When carrying other passengers make sure they don't accidentally unlock the car seat when they get out.
• Keep it clean using mild soapy water. Stronger detergents can affect the effectiveness of the harness.
• If removing covers to wash them, take a picture first so you know how to put them back together.
• Store the seat out of direct sunlight and where it is less likely to suffer accidental damage when it’s not in use.
• Look for signs of damage or wear and tear and if in doubt replace the seat. Replace it according to the manufacturer’s recommendations or every five years (some seats are designed to last from birth to 36kg).  Always replace the seat if it's involved in a collision.

Car seat dos and don’ts

• Do your research - car seats can be confusing to buy and tricky to install.
• Do follow the fitting instructions and keep them handy, ideally get fitting help from a professional.
• Do check car seats regularly and replace if damaged or involved in a collision.
• Do use rear facing seats for as long as possible.
• Don't carry someone else’s child in your car without the right seat for their size and weight.
• Don't up-size too soon.
• Don't use second hand seats.
• Don't use booster seats without backs and sides.
• Don't dress children in bulky clothes.
• Do the four checks - is it legal, does it fit the car, does it fit the child, is it correctly fitted?

For more help and advice check out these videos and useful websites:
Which – Best baby or child car seat
Good Egg Safety
Child Accident Prevention Trust
Childcarseats.org
In car safety centre
ROSPA
Rear facing seats
Car seats for children with additional needs

Leeds road safety
Contact us at road.safety@leeds.gov.uk and follow us @connectingleeds