safest car seat position
What is the safest position for front-facing car seat?
We’ve had our daughter’s rear-facing car seat in the middle of our ‘04 Hyundai Santa Fe back seat.
It’s time to turn it around, but we can’t find anything in the car seat manual about where to position the seat — driver’s side, middle or passenger side.
Does anybody know the safest place?
PS — We can’t find our Santa Fe handbook. I tried looking it up online, but couldn’t find exactly the info I need…
As long as it can be safely installed in the middle it is still safer in the middle due to damage from side impacts.
http://www.carseat.org/Technical/tech_update.htm#seatpos
Seating position
The front seat is a more dangerous environment than the rear seat for two reasons. First, recent crash data show that children 15 years and under have a 40% lower risk of serious injury in the back seat compared to the front seat (Durbin et al., 2005). This increased risk occurs because the front passenger compartment is more likely to have intrusion than the back seat area in frontal crashes, which are the most common type. Consequently, FMVSS 213 requires manufacturers to say in their instructions “that, according to crash statistics, children are safer when properly restrained in the rear seating positions than in the front seating positions.”
Second, air bags can cause serious or fatal injuries to children in the right-front passenger seat. Because “properly restrained” infants have been killed by air bags, even in low-speed crashes, a rear-facing infant must never be restrained in a seat with an active air bag. Many unrestrained older children have also been killed because they were too close when the air bag deployed. Vehicle manufacturers are phasing in features that will turn off the air bag when a child is in the front seat or allow it to deploy with less force. However, because these systems that detect a child in the front seat are new, they have not been demonstrated to be foolproof, and, because it may not be clear whether a vehicle is equipped with these sensors or with a less aggressive air bag, the universal recommendation to avoid placing children in the right-front seat still stands.
If there are more children than rear seating positions, the most appropriate child to put in the front seat is the one in a forward-facing CR with internal harness, which will keep the child well back and away from the instrument panel and/or air bag. The harness must be snug, the CR firmly installed, with top tether if possible, and the vehicle seat moved as far rearward as possible. A child in a rear-facing CR should never be placed in a front seating position with an air bag.
In general, the single safest place in the car is the center rear seat, because it is farthest from the outside of the vehicle. In any given crash, however, a different seat may be the safest, such as a left outboard seat in a right side impact. There are several reasons the center seat may not be an option. Many small cars do not have center seats; it is sometimes not possible to tightly install a CR in the center rear; belt-positioning boosters require lap-shoulder belts, which may not be available in the center; and, if there are two children, it may be necessary to separate them for behavioral reasons or because two CRs cannot be installed next to each other. The left and right seating positions are very similar in injury risk, but the right side might be a better choice for one child with one adult. The child can see the driver and can be taken or get out of the car on the side where there is no traffic. Using the center or right rear seat will also minimize the chance of injury to the child from driver seatback collapse in a severe rear impact. Although most vehicles do not have LATCH anchors for the center seating position, CRs equipped with LATCH can still be installed in the center with the vehicle belt and a top tether, if appropriate.
A difficult choice for an older child is when the seating positions available are a lap-only belt in back or a lap-shoulder belt in front, with or without a belt-positioning booster. The child in the lap-belt has an increased risk of injury because there is no upper torso restraint, while the child in the front seat has an increased risk of injury because she is sitting in the more dangerous seating position. Overall, field data suggest that the injury risk for a child properly restrained in the front seat is about the same as the child improperly restrained (lap-belt only) in the back seat. Both choices are riskier than a properly restrained child in the rear seat. (7/06)
Same lessons apply to minivan as well as hot cars
Dozen students find out in Mercedes-Benz cars that instruction applies to all
