One of the more common questions I get from new parents by email involves which kinds of car seats can be used to bring their babies home from the hospital (or birthing center), or if car seats are required at all. Many of these parents hear things from well-intentioned people that aren’t necessarily true, such as that you can’t leave the hospital without a car seat, or that you can’t leave the hospital with a convertible car seat, or that only an infant car seat that only rear-faces is allowed when you want to take your newborn home. You might have heard one or more of these things from pediatricians, baby store employees, or even hospital staff. However, none of it’s true. Let’s talk about what is.

What are US state laws and Canadian provincial laws regarding car seat use for children and newborns?

The laws from all 50 states, as well as those in the District of Columbia, and in every province in Canada, require children to use car seats at different ages. However, when it comes to newborns, there are no states, provinces, or districts that require those seats to be rear-facing only, or infant seats. The actual laws may talk about children rear-facing for certain amounts of time, such as until a year old and 20 pounds. Some other laws merely state an appropriate seat must be used, or that a seat must be used properly. However, there are no states or provinces that require seats for newborns to only face backwards.

What if the hospital tells you that you can’t leave with your baby unless your baby is in an infant seat, and that convertibles aren’t allowed?

In some cases, you might run into a hospital with a policy involving children leaving the maternity ward in infant seats. These policies aren’t typically set in stone and are often just recommendations based on what the nurses often see other parents doing. To play nicely, you can simply state that your spouse or partner will bring your newborn to your vehicle. Alternatively, your support person could also bring your convertible into the hospital for the staff to inspect.

What hospital staff are generally trying to do here is to keep children from being dropped by exhausted mothers on the way out of the hospital, rather than trying to enforce the use of a particular seat. They might also simply be trying to make sure you have your infant buckled into his or her seat safely, in terms of the harness being appropriately tight and the chest clip being at the appropriate height.

Can a hospital keep you from leaving without an infant seat?

Absolutely not. Regardless of hospital policies, there isn’t any legal grounds for keeping you from leaving based on the kind of seat you’re using unless it’s clearly unsafe (e.g., if it were broken in two). However, it’s best to try to resolve such disagreements as amicably as possible, rather than getting into shouting matches with staff. Simply state your rights to leave with your child and be firm, but polite.

The hospital does not have a legal right to keep you from leaving with your child if you have a properly fitting and installed car seat. If the hospital continues to insist on keeping your child, you have the right to call the police and request a police escort to your vehicle. This should only be done as a means of last resort for the sake of maintaining a good relationship with the hospital, but it’s definitely within your legal rights to do so.

What if I don’t have a car, and am walking or taking the bus? Can I leave the hospital without any kind of car seat?

The short answer is yes. Again, you’re likely to get a lot of concern from the hospital, but you are certainly allowed to walk out of a hospital carrying your baby (or ideally, having your spouse or partner carrying your baby) without any kind of car seat if you’re not getting into a passenger vehicle. Buses and trains are fine, as they are substantially larger than passenger vehicles and typically don’t come with restraint methods anyway.

What if I’m leaving in a taxi? Do I still need a car seat?

Absolutely! Taxis count as passenger cars, and you’re required to use the same kinds of restraints with children throughout the same age ranges as you would in a car, minivan, pickup truck, or SUV. My biggest recommendation for a good car seat for a taxi is one that’s light. If you’re using a taxi, you’re most likely going to be walking at least a little bit, whether to your taxi or from your taxi to your destination, and every additional pound is one you’re not going to want to carry. That means going with infant seats over convertible seats. Examples of very light infant seats include the Maxi-Cosi Mico Max 30 at 8.9 pounds and the Cybex Aton 2 at 9 pounds. Your spouse or partner will thank you, or you’ll thank yourself, every time you use one of these.

Which recommended car seats are safest for leaving the hospital?

The truth is that any seat, whether an infant seat or a convertible seat, can safely be used to transport a baby from a hospital. What’s most important is that the seat is properly installed (remember to avoid the common error of not installing the seat tightly enough), that it’s rear-facing, that it hasn’t expired (another common parental error with car seats), and that it fits your child by weight and height. If your seat passes all of those tests, then it’s a safe seat. Also remember that if it’s cold outside, you’ll need to think differently about keeping your infant warm in winter.

That said, my favorite infant seat right now is the Chicco KeyFit 30, simply because it’s relatively inexpensive and easy to install, which increases the odds of a safe installation. My favorite convertible car seat right now is the Clek Fllo with the infant-thingy insert due to its class-leading rear-facing capabilities. If you were choosing between the two, I’d go with the Fllo, simply because you’ll be able to use it much longer while rear-facing and because you’ll also be able to use it for a while forward-facing.

Do you recommend starting with an infant seat or with a convertible car seat?

This is a great question, and it ultimately comes down to your needs and preferences. With our children, we’ve always started out with infant seats, simply because those are much easier to attach and detach than even the easiest convertible seats due to coming with a base that can stay in the vehicle at all times. With an infant seat, you simply connect it and disconnect it when entering and leaving the vehicle, and you can remove a sleeping infant from a vehicle without waking him or her. Sleep is very precious when you’re a new parent, and no matter how many kids you’ve had already, when you’ve got a newborn in the house, you’re always a new parent. So I like infant seats due to the convenience they offer. They’re also a handy way to carry infants, even though my wife and I much prefer baby-wearing or using a stroller with a bassinet or at the very least, a deep recline. You can read Susie’s reviews of her favorite single and double strollers here.

I have more questions…help!

I hope this has helped clear up some of the confusion about when you do and don’t need a car seat to leave a hospital or birthing or midwife center with your newborn baby. If you’ve still got more questions about specific situations or additional transportation options, feel free to shoot me an email; I get several a day from parents asking all kinds of questions, and I do my best to respond within a few days in between testing seats and strollers, researching car safety, and spending time with my wonderful family. Alternatively, for a faster response, ask a question on our forum, and you’ll get answers from any of our members!

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can  shop here for Canadian purchases. Have a question or want to discuss best practices? Join us in the forums!

At its heart, this blog is about advocacy: for safer and more sustainable transportation for everyone. Sometimes that means discussing safer car seats. Other times it means discussing safer cars, safer infrastructure, or safer alternatives to driving altogether. And sometimes it means discussing best practices that make driving safer for our youngest passengers, including extended rear facing and extended harnessing. This entry is about such a law in New Jersey.

Governor Chris Chrstie in New Jersey signed a bill on May 7th, 2015, that amends and improves the child restraint law in New Jersey. Starting on September 1st, 2015, the following changes will take effect. I enjoy reading legal jargon and technical data, but not everyone does, so here’s what the updated law for child restraints, or car seats and booster seats, means for you in New Jersey in straight talk:

Rear-facing in New Jersey as of September 1st, 2015:

Kids under 2 who weigh under 30 pounds must travel in a rear-facing car seat that includes a 5-point harness. In other words, this means either an infant seat (the Kiddy Evolution Pro being the best example of one I’ve reviewed) or a convertible seat (the Clek Fllo and Diono Rainier are my favorites in this area). Keep in mind that the majority of babies outgrow most infant seats before they turn 2 (with a few exceptions, such as the Evolution Pro), and will need to use a rear-facing convertible seat to reach that age. However, if you start with a convertible seat, such as the Rainier or the Fllo when used with its infant insert, you can use the same seat from the day your child leaves the hospital until s/he is ready to forward face (which, ideally, won’t be before 4).

Kids between 2 and 3 must either rear-face in a car seat that includes a 5-point harness (in other words, an infant or a convertible seat), or must forward-face in an equivalent seat (in other words, a convertible or combination seat). The key point here is that you cannot place a child who is 2 or 3 years old in a booster unless the child already weighs 40 pounds. At this age range, my preferred car seats are still convertible seats, because they allow you to continue to rear-face, and I believe our kids should continue to rear-face until 4 if at all possible, the way they do in Sweden. However, if you’ve got to forward-face, combination seats are the next best choice, since they have booster modes you’ll be able to use in the future.

Kids between 4 and 7 who are under 57 inches tall, or under 4’9″, must either use a forward-facing car seat that includes a 5-point harness or a booster seat. This law does not include a weight limit, and only has to do with age and height. So does this mean that you can’t continue rear-facing even if you have a seat that would allow you to once your child turns 4?

The way the law is written, yes, but in practical conditions, no. You’re not going to get pulled over and arrested for continuing to rear-face if your little one fits within the height and weight requirements of your convertible seat. Seats like the Fllo, Foonf, Rainier, or Pacifica that include 50-pound rear-facing limits can often keep kids rear-facing into 5 years, which means those kids will continue to reap the benefits of the safest car seat configuration we know of.

If you are forward-facing by this point, however, the two best seats on the market are the Britax Frontier G1.1 and the Pinnacle G1.1. Interestingly enough, they’re also two of the best booster seats on the market, since they’re both combination seats. These seats have the height and weight limits necessary to take pretty much any child all the way through the front-facing years into the booster years and to the point where they no longer need to use car seats at all.

Kids between 8 and 17  are required to wear a seat belt that’s been properly adjusted and fastened. Again, this law describes the minimum legal requirement. Most children will not be ready to leave boosters until they’re at least 10 to 12 years old and can pass the 5-step test. In other words, for the first several years of this age range, the best options for kids are booster seats. High-back boosters are also better than backless boosters, as they offer side impact protection for the head, neck, and torso, which are the most important parts of the body. Seats like the Frontier and Pinnacle remain my top choices for the forward-facing and booster-years until children are ready for the adult seat belt.

When must children in New Jersey sit in the back or front seats?

Finally,while the law only requires children to sit in the back seat until they turn 8, children should sit in the back seat until they’re physically and psychologically mature enough to use the adult seat belt system, which again, typically won’t occur for most children until they are at least 10 to 12 years old.  Even at that point, it’s still safer for children to sit in the back for the same reason it’s safer for adults to sit in the back seat; it offers more protection than the front seat for frontal collisions as well as in side collisions.

Exceptions in New Jersey, full legal text, and ramifications for car seat laws in the United States

If you need to transport a child in a vehicle that doesn’t include rear seats, such as a two-seater convertible or a pickup truck with a standard cab, you can legally install a car seat in the front passenger seat. However, rear-facing car seats are not allowed in this position unless passenger front airbags are either turned off, disabled, or not present.

You can read the full legal text here. Overall, these are good new laws, although they’re still not up to where we should be in terms of best practices in rear-facing, forward-facing, or booster use. With these measures, with the rear-facing one being the most important, New Jersey becomes the first state in the United States to require rear-facing until 2. Hopefully other states follow suit, and the conversation can move toward encouraging extended-rear facing and harnessing across the country.

—

If you find the information on car safety, recommended car seats, and car seat reviews on this car seat blog helpful, you can shop through this Amazon link for any purchases, car seat-related or not. Canadians can shop through this link for Canadian purchases.

I love winter, and not just because it reminds me of Frozen! However, keeping children warm in car seats can be a challenge when the weather gets cold, as it’s not as simple as throwing a coat on your child and putting him or her in your vehicle. This is one of the more common mistakes parents make when it comes to keeping children warm, so let’s take a look at some unsafe, and then 3 safe ways to dress your child in a car seat this winter.

Why are some coats unsafe in car seats?

Let’s start at the beginning. What’s wrong with using some coats in a car seat? Well, this touches on one of the biggest mistakes parents make when using car seats: they don’t tighten the harness enough. As we’ve discussed in the other article, in order for your child to be protected as much as possible in a collision, the harness needs to be snug against the child, or as close as possible to the body of the child in order to effectively turn him or her into an extension of the car seat, which is designed to become an extension of the car.

However, if you’ve got several layers of clothing between your child and your child’s harness, it becomes increasingly harder for the restraint to accurately take into account the side of the child. What ends up happening is that the restraint instead fits itself to your child’s coat, and if a crash occurs, the pockets of air between the coat and the child are pushed out and the harness itself is too slack to do its job of restraining and protecting your child. What results from a loose harness is a risk of your child coming partially or completely loose from his or her car seat. This, of course, can also happen to adults with seat belts.

How do I make sure the harness is not too loose over my child’s clothing?

To make sure your child’s harness isn’t installed too loosely over your child’s clothing, use the coat test. Buckle your child into the car seat while she is wearing a coat, and tighten the harness until there isn’t any slack at her collar bones, just inside of her shoulders. You shouldn’t be able to pinch any fabric when gripping the harness fabric. From here, remove your child, coat and all, while keeping the harness at its current setting. Remove your child’s coat and place her in the seat and reharness her. If there’s any slack at the collar bone, the coat isn’t appropriate for the car seat.

What are 3 safe ways to dress my child in a car seat when it’s cold outside?

1. Try the coat test. The quickest way to see if your child can wear a particular coat or jacket safely in a car seat is to test your child in the coat and out of the coat and see if you need to make any adjustments to retighten the harness. The coat test is described above. You can also perform it backwards by tightening a harness on a child without a coat and then buckling the child in with the coat. If the harness needs to be loosened significantly to accommodate the coat, then the coat is too thick for the car seat.

The solution is to only use coats or jackets that pass the coat test. It’s important to note that you can’t tell if a coat or jacket will pass the test simply by looking at it; there are a lot of thin-looking coats that will fail the test, and I’ve seen many thick-looking coats pass it. The only way to tell is to try each coat or jacket out one at a time.

2. Wear the coat backwards over the harness. Another safe way to dress a child in a car seat in cold weather is to tighten the harness around the child without a coat and then to simply wear the coat backwards over the child and over the harness. It might look a bit funny, but it’s absolutely safe and gets rid of the need to try out a coat with the coat test. Once the child is out of the car seat and ready to leave the vehicle, he or she simply wears the coat normally. Easy! This is the best method to use if you don’t want to deal with the coat test or with blankets, as in the method below.

3. Blankets, gloves, and hats. Finally, if you don’t have a coat available or don’t want to try it out or use the backwards method, there’s always the old-fashioned approach: blankets, gloves and hats may be worn on top of a harness. The gloves and hats have nothing to do with a harness, of course, while the blanket may easily be tucked in around the child once she’s been strapped in tight with the harness. This is the method that’s likely to work best with infants and toddlers, who aren’t going to be as patient as older children when it comes to safely strapping them in.

In conclusion, while it might take a bit of planning to figure out which method works for you, the truth is that it’s worth the time it takes to dress your children safely for their car seat this winter. Properly restrained children (whether they’re rear-facing, forward-facing, or in booster seats) have much better odds of surviving any collision than even properly-restrained adults in many cases, and the rules of car seat safety are just as important to keep in mind when the temperatures drop as when the weather gets warm. Stay safe this winter!

If you find the information on car safety, recommended car seats, and car seat reviews on this car seat blog helpful, you can shop through this Amazon link for any purchases, car seat-related or not. Canadians can shop through this link for Canadian purchases.

I’ve recently written about 7 reasons to buy a new car seat, and received a number of emails from parents thanking me for the information and asking for more tips about mistakes they were likely making with their car seats.

It’s scary to think about the fact that somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of car seats are not used correctly, especially when we consider the fact that close to 500 children die every year in the United States in car crashes, with a number of them in car seats that were supposed to keep them safe.

We’re not in Sweden, but we can certainly learn from them and apply a number of tips and strategies domestically to keep our children safe. Here’s a list of some of the most common mistakes that you might be making with your car seat, and how to fix them.

5 Big Mistakes You’re Probably Making With Your Car Seat (and How to Fix Them)

1. Your car seat is too loose.

Most parents make a good effort to install their car seats well; they might look at the manual, run the seat belt through the belt path or attach the LATCH anchors, and pull until the belt or anchors feel snug. However, most parents don’t know just how tight an installation needs to be in order for it to do its job. It’s not like wearing an adult seat belt. This is the most common error I see parents making when inspecting car seats. Even a great seat like a Fllo, which is my favorite above-$200 convertible car seat, or the  Size4Me 65, my favorite sub-$200 convertible, needs a solid install to keep your child safe.

The danger in this situation is that if you’ve got a loose seat in a collision, your child could slip out of the seat or the seat could come loose entirely, with devastating consequences. For a car seat to do its job, it needs to essentially be a part of the car, in order to benefit from the car’s efforts to slow itself down safely in the event of a collision (see my post on the physics and biology of car crashes for more explanations of what occurs in a crash). How do you tell if your installation is tight enough?

Test your seat by pushing it at the base with your non-dominant hand. The base is either where the belt path is located (where the seat belt runs through the seat) or where the LATCH anchors connect to the vehicle. Push the seat. If you can move it left to right or forward or back by more than an inch, your installation isn’t tight enough.

To fix it, you need to push your car seat down with as much force as necessary to achieve a tight install with either your seat belt or your LATCH anchors. If you have a car made after 1996, you can lock the seat belt simply by pulling it out all the way until you hear the click of the ratcheting mechanism, and then letting it spool back in. You’ll need a locking clip if you have an older car with a non-locking seat belt. The key point, however, is to make sure the installation is tight enough, and this takes weight on the seat.

2. Your harness is too loose.

Another incredibly common mistake parents make when it comes to car seat installation is leaving too much slack in the child’s harness after buckling him or her into the seat. This is another one of those errors that I see every day with children in car seats, as if you don’t know how tight the harness is really supposed to be, there’s no reason for you to make it that tight, especially if, like most parents, you’re used to having a bit of slack in your adult seat belt if you move back and forth in your seat while driving or while sitting as a passenger.

The danger in this situation is that child harnesses don’t work the same way adult seat belts do: if your child is loose in his or her harness, he or she can easily fly out of the car seat in even a mild crash, which can lead to severe or fatal injuries if the child comes into contact with another part of the car or with another passenger. It’s even possible for the child to leave the vehicle completely, which is almost always a fatal outcome.

Test your seat by strapping your child into it and then pinching the harness strap fabric at your child’s shoulder’s between your fingers. If you can actually pinch that fabric once the harness has been tightened, then the harness isn’t tight enough.

To fix it, simply tighten the harness. Depending on the seat, you might need to practice it a few different times until you manage to get all of the slack out, and some seats might have harness straps that only seem to want to stay uneven. Keep trying; it’s important to get all of the slack out every single time.

3. You’re forward-facing too soon.

Yet another mistake I see all-too-frequently among parents is the decision to forward-face their children too soon. The law in most states is that children can’t be turned forward facing until they’re at least 1 or 20 pounds, but this is far too early to do so safely. The AAP’s recommendation of waiting until 2 is better, but that still doesn’t go nearly far enough. A number of parents view the ability to forward-face as a right of passage and as a sign of their children’s maturity and developmental aptitude, but the truth of the matter is that we aren’t doing our children any favors by forward-facing them before we absolutely have to.

The danger in this situation is simply that children’s spinal columns and other bones are still in development, and are still incredibly fragile throughout the first few years of life. When children are placed in rear-facing seats, their backs, which are the strongest parts of their bodies, have a much better chance of sustaining the tremendous forces in a collision than their heads, necks, and spinal cords in a forward-facing seat. If an infant or young child faces forward in a crash, his or her relatively giant head will fly forward in the same collision, which can easily expose the spinal cord and lead to paralysis or death. It can happen in an instant, and it’s completely preventable. There’s a reason the Swedes don’t forward-face until 4: they know it’s safe to stay rear-facing as long as possible.

To fix this, simply rear face as long as possible. To make it easier, look for car seats that allow you to rear-face longer by height or by weight. Seats like the Fllo, Foonf, Rainier, or Rava allow you to rear-face until 50 pounds, which is as good as it gets today in the United States.  This, by the way, is one of the best reasons to buy a new car seat; the technology is changing in a good way to enable us to rear-face longer, which saves lives every year.

4. You’re boostering too soon (or abandoning the booster too soon!).

Just as parents are likely to forward-face before they should, a lot parents are all-too-eager to transfer their children into boosters, or forgo the booster seat entirely to place their children in adult seat belts. Both of these mistakes can lead to needless injuries and deaths in children who would otherwise be protected by simply being placed in the appropriate seat.

A lot of parents decide to start boostering because it takes less time to buckle a child or have him or her do the buckling than it does to properly install a harness on a child (see point #2 above). Other parents allow their children to use booster seats or to abandon booster seats entirely because their children ask to do so, or as a reward for their children’s behavior. However, safety should trump convenience when it comes to life and death situations, and a 2-or 3-year old in a booster seat or an 8- or 9-year old in an adult seat belt are examples of unsafe situations that can lead to completely preventable tragedies.

The danger here is similar to the dangers of forward-facing soon. Preschool-and early-elementary-aged children can’t sit still well enough to sit in booster seats safely, as booster seats only provide the lap and shoulder belts to position a child, while a 5-point harness keeps a child perfectly positioned for maximum protection in the event of a collision. A child who has a booster seat belt behind her shoulder, for example, can easily lose an arm or fly out of her booster due to being partially unrestrained in a collision. Similarly, children who don’t fit adult seat belts can face devastating internal injuries when crushed by belts that are improperly sitting over soft internal organs. Alternatively, they can fly out of their belts entirely. It’s not worth it.

To fix this, simply wait until your children are ready to transition. That means no boosters until ideally 8, and no adult seat belts until the 5-step test is passed, which typically isn’t passed until kids are around 10 to 12 years old. It also means looking for seats that work well for extended harnessing and that booster well. Seats like the Frontier G1.1 and Pinnacle G1.1 are the best in the business for both forward-facing and boostering. This again points to the benefit of being willing to consider new car seats.

5. Your car seat has expired.

Finally, while using an expired car seat is just asking for trouble, you’d be shocked at the number of parents who put their children in them every day without thinking twice about this. A big reason for why parents do so is because many don’t know their car seats’ expiration dates, and many more don’t even know that care seats can and do expire.

The danger here is that an expired car seat may not protect your child in a collision the way it would if it had not expired due to it being structurally weaker in ways you can’t see until they fail in a collision. Much like how using old tires can lead to needless fatalities if they blow out while driving on the highway, using expired car seats invites unnecessary risk into your children’s lives.

The fix is to check your car seat, note the expiration date, and replace your car seat before you reach that date. There are plenty of quality new car seats on the market, and you’ll benefit from a number of additional advantages to buying them besides the knowledge that your seat will work at full capacity in a collision.

In conclusion, if you read this list and found yourself making one, more, or all of these mistakes, don’t despair. Just make the change now that you know better. Car accidents kill hundreds of children each year in the United States, and the majority of those deaths are preventable simply by following best practices in car seat use and in driving safety. It’s worth it.

If you find the information on car safety, recommended car seats, and car seat reviews on this car seat blog helpful, you can shop through this Amazon link for any purchases, car seat-related or not. Canadians can shop through this link for Canadian purchases.

If you’re into car safety, child safety, and reviewing recommended car seats the way I am, it’s easy to come up with reasons to buy a new car seat. Similarly, if you’ve ever seen the damage that can occur to children or adults who aren’t properly restrained in a car crash, or, alternatively, if you’ve seen how properly-restrained children can survive unimaginably horrible car accidents (see the orphan seat phenomenon), you already know that new car seats are a good idea.

However, if you’re like the average parent, you might have great intentions to care for your children (or grandchildren, or nieces and nephews), but might not understand exactly why there are so many rules and regulations about car seats, or what the differences are between a $30 eBay seat and a $300 seat like a Clek Fllo (pictured above) or a Britax Boulevard ClickTight, and why the latter are a much better investment in your child’s safety. This post is designed to help clarify some of these questions by working through 10 good reasons to buy a new car seat.

Top 7 Reasons to Buy a New Car Seat, with Explanations and Reviews

1. Car seats do expire, just like bicycle helmets and smoke detectors.

It’s easy to look at a car seat the way we look at a couch in the living room: something we use until it breaks down, looks frightful, or until we’re in the mood for a new one. However, a much better analogy would be to think of a car seat like a bicycle helmet or a set of tires. Bicycle helmets have a limited shelf life, which means that they eventually expire and need to be thrown away whether they were used or not, and whether they’ve ever been involved in a crash or not.

Car seats work in exactly the same way; they’re made of a combination of metal and plastic, and the plastic components break down over time. Similarly, your tires should be replaced every few years even if they look fine, and your smoke detector has an expiration date printed on the underside.  Replacing your smoke detector isn’t something you’d put off to save a few dollars, and replacing your car seat is just as important when it comes to keeping your loved ones safe.

2. 2- and 3-year-olds shouldn’t be forward facing, or new seats make extended rear-facing easier

If there’s one thing I harp on in this blog it’s about the benefits of extended rear-facing, and this is simply easier when you buy one of the newer car seats on the market today compared to the older ones. The truth of the matter is that toddlers and young preschoolers like 2- and 3-year-olds have no business forward-facing, even though it’s currently perfectly legal in the United States. Children don’t forward-face in Sweden until they’re at least 4, on average, and this is a big part of why Sweden has the lowest rates of child car accident fatalities in the world.

I’ve written in several places, such as here and here, about how and why rear-facing past 2 is so important, but to make it feasible, you need car seats that rear-face until at least 40 pounds, like the Head Wise 70 or NextFit. It’s even better if you can buy one of the seats that rear-face until 50 pounds, like the Fllo, Foonf, Extend2Fit, Rainier, or Pacifica. The safety differences are worth it, and it’s worth noting that none of the seats with 50 pound rear-facing limits existed more than a handful of years ago. The Fllo, Rainier, and Pacifica just came out this year! That’s how new the technology is.

3. 4- and 5-year-olds shouldn’t be in booster seats, or new seats make extended harnessing easier

Just as 2- and 3-year-olds shouldn’t forward-face due to their developmental vulnerabilities and the inherent safety of rear-facing, 4-and 5-year-olds shouldn’t be in booster seats, regardless of how mature they may appear to be. Instead, they should remain forward-facing as long as possible in harnessed seats, and ideally until around age 8. This is particularly striking when you think of how many 8-year-olds ride in the front seat in seat belts with their parents.

At any rate, keeping elementary-aged children in forward-facing seats and out of boosters would have been an impossibility just a few years ago with most harnessed seats on the market, simply because most of them topped out in weight and height limits too soon to make extended harnessing feasible for all but the smallest children. However, thanks to recent developments in seats like the Frontier and Pinnacle, extended harnessing is not only possible, it’s practical and comfortable.

4. 8-and 9-year olds shouldn’t use adult seat belts, or you need booster seats for longer than you think

Just as 4-and 5-year-olds aren’t ready for booster seats, 8-and 9-year-olds aren’t ready for the adult seat belt, no matter how much they may argue to the contrary. The truth is that booster seats should be used for far longer than most parents think; children typically won’t fit adult seat belt correctly and safely until they’re between 10 and around 12 years old, which means that if you’re allowing your 3rd or 4th grader to sit with you in the front or even sit in the back without a booster seat, you’d benefit from changing that for a safer seating option. Fortunately, the Frontier 90 and Pinnacle 90 not only make excellent forward-facing seats, they’re also the best on the market when it comes to boosters, which makes the buying process cheaper and simpler.

4. Car seats can’t be reused after a crash; they need to be replaced

We talked earlier about how car seats eventually expired whether or not they were used. However, if a car seat is used in its intended purpose, it definitely needs to be replaced, and it’s definitely expired. The reason here is the same as that for the bicycle helmet: you can’t always see structural damage with the naked eye. If there’s as much as a hairline fracture within the car seat, it could render it severely weakened in comparison to its designed strength, and this also applies for bicycle helmets.

5. Improvements in side impact protection, or the most vulnerable part of a car in an accident

I’ve written about all kinds of accidents and seen many more in my years on this earth, and the kinds that have always been most likely to lead to fatalities have been side impacts. There simply isn’t much material protecting you in a t-bone collision, which is why these collisions are the most likely to be fatal compared to frontal and rear impacts. With this knowledge, you want car seats that have side impact protection systems, such as those found in the Fllo, Foonf, Rainier, and Advocate ClickTight, which I think are the four best car seats for side protection available today in the United States.

6. New car seats are lighter, narrower, and easier to fit 3 across than older ones

This factor isn’t so much related to safety as it is to convenience, but if you’re anything like me, you appreciate anything that makes modern life a bit easier. And the fact is that newer car seats are lighter and narrower than ever before when compared to their height and weight capacities. Seats like the Fllo and Foonf are about as narrow as car seats get at 17 inches across, yet they can still rear-face to 50 pounds while making it possible to fit 3 car seats across in any vehicle. Check out the 3 across car seat guide to see which car seats fit in your car, minivan, SUV, or pickup truck. You might be surprised; these days, the size of your back seat doesn’t have to keep you from hauling your little ones safely.

7. New car seats are bringing new technologies like load legs and rear-facing tethering

Finally, while newer isn’t always better, it certainly is when it comes to car seat technology. For example, think about rear-facing tethering. There are only a handful of car seats that allow you to tether while rear-facing in the United States, even though rear-facing tethering does have a number of advantages in car seat safety. A few of those advantages include the ability to reduce rebound and rotational rotation, as well as the ability to limit head excursion, or the forward movement of a child’s head in a rear impact collision. These are significant features, and only seats like the Rainier, Pacifica, and a few others allow you to take advantage of them. But the number of seats that let you tether rear-facing is growing by the year, and buying newer car seats allows you to keep your children safer for longer.

In conclusion, while it might be a pain to go car seat shopping (although I hope my reviews of recommended car seats makes it easier), the truth is that you’re doing your children a favor by keeping up to date with their car seats. Car accidents are the primary killer of children in the United States, and for a few hundred dollars every 7 or 10 years, you can keep your children safer than ever. They’re worth it.

If you find the information on car safety, recommended car seats, and car seat reviews on this car seat blog helpful, you can shop through this Amazon link for any purchases, car seat-related or not. Canadians can shop through this link for Canadian purchases.