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Seat Basket

Travelling safely with child car seats

When travelling in a car you should always respect the law and respect your own safety as well as that of others by wearing a seatbelt at all times. It is important that everyone wears a seatbelt when driving as many shocking television adverts and evidence have show that even a passenger in the rear of a car can be badly harmed or cause worse fatalities to the buckled in driver and front passenger.

Often, seatbelts are designed with adults in mind and can sometimes cause trouble for small children travelling in the back. For this reason there are a wide range of child seats for all ages.

For older children in many cases the main issue is that they are too short for the seatbelt to be placed in the correct position. Booster seats much like you can get at cinemas or in hairdressers, can elevate the child to the proper height and so the seatbelt will protect the child rather than cause potential harm.

With smaller children especially babies, specialist child seats need to be used. In recent years many of these have come under scrutiny from various safety groups as some were found to not be safe for children in the event of an accident.

When choosing a child seat you need to choose the right one for the child who will be using it, they tend to come in three sizes: Newborn, Infant and Toddler.

Newborn car seats look a lot like general baby carrying baskets; they have a great level of protection for babies and can be front or rear facing.

Toddler and infant seats can look more like miniaturised car seats but have more complex harnesses to ensure that firstly a child cannot free themselves and move around the car but also provides the best protection in the event of a crash, the added harnesses spread the pressure from the seatbelt which could cause bruising or internal damage if the added harnesses were not there.

All child car seats need to be secured to the car, this is normally done via the existing seatbelt and the car seat will connect to the seatbelt or to the underside of the seat cushion. When buying a car seat many retailers will demonstrate how to correctly fit the seat so you know how to properly attach the seat to your car.

Once the car seat is secured, make sure that before any journey you test the tension on the seat, it shouldn’t have much freedom to move or wobble around. A sharp pull on the seat imitating a frontal collision should be able to give you an idea of how secure the seat is.

Be sure to check with car safety information sources or your local motoring shop as many of these stores will offer advice and free demonstrations when selecting your child’s car seat so that you can rest assured that your child is safe when you are driving and you can keep your mind on the road.