Even the Swedes have limits. What kinds of car seats are taboo in the land of best practices?
One of my favorite resources for information on best practices is the Swedish national Society for Road Safety, or the NTF (Saker Trafik). They’re basically the Swedish version of the NHTSA, and they have a lovely frequently asked question section with all kinds of answers related to the promotion of safe road traffic. I’ve written about them before here (Swedish Car Safety FAQ) and revisited to share their thoughts on a question that comes up from time to time: which kinds of car seats are dangerous?
We know that best practices from a car seat perspective basically means to rear-face until your child is at least 4 or 5 and then to booster until your child is at least 10 to 12. You can do this with two seats readily available in the United States: the Graco Extend2Fit and the Clek Oobr (or if you want to keep within the same company, the Clek Fllo can be your convertible car seat). But what do you want to avoid when it comes to a car seat? We’ll tackle that question today.
Which Kinds of Car Seats are Dangerous, Per Swedish Best Practices?
According to the NTF, the kinds of car seats they’d call “dangerous” are the ones that allow you to forward-face from the age of 1. To quote them specifically, thanks to Google Translate:
There are car seats on the market that are approved for forward-facing placement from about 1 year of age. We could probably call them “dangerous”.
NTF recommends using a car seat that can withstand rear-facing occupants for as long as possible, preferably up to 25 kg. The absolute safest way to travel in a car is in reverse. Children should therefore go back as long as possible, preferably up to 4-5 years of age.
Is that really all it takes to make a car seat safe?
Per the Swedes, yes. And no one knows more about car seat safety than they do; they have and continue to have the best track record when it comes to keeping kids alive on the road of any country. Now, there are other parts to road safety, of course. You’ll want to drive as little as possible (the Swedes average only a fraction of Americans’ average annual mileage), and choose safe speeds (that means 43 mph on undivided highways and 62 mph on divided ones) and choose safe roads (the divided ones) whenever you do, and you’ll be far ahead of the game. The full list of articles related to best practices in driving behaviors, vehicle selection, and road infrastructure is here.
If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases. It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.
Per Sweden, if your kids are under 5, rear-face them. Once you can’t, high-back booster them. Save seat belts until 10, 11, or 12 and the front seat until at least 13.
Just as with rear-facing, there’s a lot of debate in the United States over what actually constitute best practices when it comes to when to switch from harnessed front-facing seats to booster seats. However, just as with rear-facing, the Swedes are more than happy to provide guidelines for what to do and when, no matter how much we go back and forth over the basics in the United States.
As a review, rear-facing best practices means doing so for as long as possible, and ideally at least until 4 or 5. This is standard practice in Sweden, where they’ve enjoyed the best child auto safety records on Earth for decades, and it’s now becoming standard practice in neighboring Norway, which has joined Sweden at the top of the mountain in terms of the all-important task of keeping children alive in and around car traffic. While most parents in the United States are still forward-facing shortly after 1, more and more are learning about the benefits of extended rear-facing and are following the Swedish (and now Norwegian) example. So what can they teach us about forward-facing and boostering? We’ll review their practices today.
When do parents forward-face children in Sweden?
A high-back booster like the Flex 120 is the next step after rear-facing until 4 or 5 in Sweden.
This is actually a trick question, because parents in Sweden don’t typically forward-face. Yes, there are some parents who do (just as there are some parents who forward-face their kids before 4 in Sweden), but the vast majority of parents there don’t use forward-facing seats. If they rear-face with convertible seats, which almost all parents do, they simply stop using the seats when their kids outgrow them and switch to…booster seats.
Booster seats?
Yes! In Sweden, the standard practice is to start boostering kids once they outgrow rear-facing seats. This is visible here directly from the NTF, Sweden’s equivalent of the NHTSA:
“Question: At what weight/height/age, the child can be placed on the booster seat instead of in a car seat?
Answer: Children should travel rearward facing car seat (seat for the infant) as long as possible, to the age of 4-5 years. When the child has grown out of its rearward-facing child safety seat (seat for the infant seat) recommend NTF to move on to a booster seat.”
There is no mention whatsoever of a forward-facing harnessed seat; the standard recommendation is to move directly from a rear-facing seat to a booster seat after spending the first 4-5 years (or as long as possible) in a rear-facing seat.
Why do Swedish parents switch to high-back booster seats instead of harnessed or forward-facing seats?
In Sweden, once you stop rear-facing (at 4 or 5), you move directly into a high-back booster (e.g., something like the Clek Oobr).
This is done for a few different reasons. One involves the Swedish belief that older children who are harnessed absorb the tremendous collision forces in the head, neck, and shoulders, which is something to be avoided. In fact, this is the reason why rear-facing is so much safer–when rear-facing, the much stronger muscles and much larger surface area of the back are available to absorb forces instead of having them concentrated in the head, neck, and shoulders. The Swedish belief is that when boostered (which is essentially using a seat belt that’s adjusted to fit children as well as adults), the entire torso can move forward in a collision, spreading crash forces throughout the upper body instead of concentrating them in two of the most fragile areas of the body (the head and neck).
Does this mean that “extended harnessing” is not considered best practices in Sweden?
This is correct; in Sweden, virtually no parents practice harnessing, extended or otherwise, because it’s not believed to be safe. What’s done is to move directly from rear-facing in the first 4-5 years to using a high-back booster.
It’s also worth noting that a number of studies in the US have also shown that high-backed boosters are as safe as forward-facing (harnessed) seats once children are mature enough to sit safely in both. In other words, if you raise your child to sit upright and still in a high-back booster seat (and not reach out of it, play with the seat belt, unbuckle himself/herself, or do anything else unsafe), s/he’ll be equally safe in both kinds of seats. In Sweden, the expectation is for kids to do this from 4 or 5 onward, and kids are taught to do so the same way they’re taught not to play in the street or touch stove tops.
If forward-facing isn’t safer than boostering, then why is it recommended in the US?
Forward-facing, or harnessing, is recommended in the US due to a mixture of a lack of knowledge of best practices and due to efforts to mitigate the additional risks of premature boostering.
First of all, most parents in the US aren’t rear-facing until 4 to 5 as in Sweden. Three out of four kids are forward-facing before they turn 2, and only around 1 out of every 100 children will still be rear-facing at 4, which means that forward-facing is the only stage between most 1 year olds in the US and being placed in a booster seat. We know booster seats are absolutely inappropriate for toddlers, so recommending forward-facing at least keeps children in a better position than they’d otherwise face in most homes.
Second, as noted above, most parents aren’t aware of how much safer it is to rear-face instead of forward-face, and this is largely because extended rear-facing isn’t propagated by any large-scale authority in the United States. The NHTSA simply says to rear-face “as long as possible” but fills their diagrams and pamphlets online with references to children forward facing from 1 or 2. The AAP is hopelessly out of date with their recommendations and only switched to recommending rear-facing until 2 a few years ago. The vast majority of states don’t require rear-facing past 1. To put it simply, the US is backwards when it comes to car safety, and the main Americans you’ll see advocating extended rear-facing (for example, yours truly) are those who have taken the time to learn about best practices in car seat safety, which are nearly-exclusively found in Sweden.
This adds up to a vicious circle. Parents stop rear-facing after 1 because they don’t know any better, and they don’t know any better because all of the authorities are telling them that they only actually need to rear-face until 1. Meanwhile, they’re told to forward-face with the focus on keeping very young children out of booster seats, which leads to very little emphasis on rear-facing and a lack of understanding of the fact that harnessed seating doesn’t necessarily offer any advantages over boostering once children are mature enough to sit in booster seats. This maturity point, additionally, will vary tremendously with how children have been raised, as well as with individual differences between children.
So what’s best if I want to follow best practices for my child?
From 5 (or later, if you can still rear-face) to 10, 11, or 12, use a high-back, then low-back booster. Keep boostering until your child passes the 5-step test. Two of my favorite high-back boosters include the Clek Oobr and Maxi-Cosi RodiFix. Low-back boosters are fine once kids are about 7; high-back boosters are designed to keep kids’ heads in place even if they fall asleep.
Some things in life never change. Children need adults who love them. And if they’re in cars, they’re safest rear-facing.
Every now and then a pop science article or research paper comes out stating forward-facing is safer than rear-facing (it isn’t), or insisting boosters are just fine for 2 year olds (they aren’t) or that preschoolers are just as safe in seat belts as they are in car seats (that’s wrong too). Unfortunately, with the influence corporations and ad dollars have over the dissemination of information in the United States, it’s quite easy to get tricked into believing nonsense (or “fake news”, to use recent parlance). Fortunately, good ideas remain good ideas no matter whether we believe in them or not. Let’s see what best practices look like by people who practice them.
How Long Should Children Rear-Face, Per Swedish Recommendations?
Per the NTF, children should rear-face as long as possible and be turned forward facing earliest at 4-5 years of age.
Note how the response doesn’t state that children should stop rear-facing at 4 or 5; it says they should be rear-facing as long as possible, but no earlier than when they are 4 to 5. In other words, if you can rear-face past 4 or 5 due to a child continuing to fit in his or her car seat, that’s a good idea. But your baseline goal should be 4 to 5. As I’ve noted in previous articles, that means preschool. That means kindergarten. It means prioritizing rear-facing and not forward-facing earlier than necessary, regardless of what fellow parents or family members are saying. It’s easier in Sweden since fellow parents and family members will be doing the same thing. But whether in Sweden or in the US, these are best practices.
What About Rear-Facing Safety For Side and Rear Impacts, Per Swedish Recommendations?
Per the NTF, rear-facing is always the safest position for young children. They note it would also be safer for adults, but that because we have stronger necks, we’re slightly more capable of handling crash stresses. They then note that forward-facing might be slightly safer for rear-impacts, but because most collisions are frontal collisions, while rear-enders are typically not at the high speeds inherent in frontal collisions, it’s best to always rear-face. They add that the best position for a side impact is away from the point of impact, but that this is of course impossible to predict. They concede that other factors are probably more important than rear- or forward-facing in side impacts, but that rear-facing is still not a bad position in such collisions.
This recommendation is in line with those I’ve made indicating that rear-facing is still overall the safest orientation for a car seat when aggregating all crash positions and risks. By extension, it supports the argument that the 3rd row is a safe one for child and adult passengers (I posit the safest). The Swedes additionally believe that the front and back rows are equally safe for rear-facing children as long as the frontal airbag can be disabled. This isn’t the case in the US for 99% of passenger vehicles, so on this side of the Atlantic, the back rows are safer.
How Long Should Children Use Booster Seats, Per Swedish Recommendations?
Per the NTF, children should remain using booster seats until they are 10 to 12 years old. They note this is because children’s hips aren’t fully formed until then and that controlling the belt path around the child is necessary to keep the lap belt from penetrating a child’s abdomen and causing internal injuries. They note that the amount of time a child will be able to sit on a booster seat will depend on the child’s length as well as on the vehicle one uses. If the shoulder belt path is affected, they suggest bypassing the booster seat and ensuring that the shoulder belt path is appropriate.
This recommendation is directly in line with those from the 5-step test, which most children are typically not able to pass until they are between 10 and 12 years old. While the 5-step test is not specifically mentioned, the principles are the same, as are the risks of bypassing the recommendation (internal organ damage).
What Makes a Car Seat Dangerous, Per Swedish Recommendations?
Per the NTF, what makes a car seat dangerous is allowing a child to forward face from age 1. They recommend car seats capable of rear-facing up to 25 kg, or 55 lbs, and state once again that the safest way to travel in a car is rear-facing. They then state that children should rear-face for as long as possible, and preferably until they are 4-5 years old.
This section is rather self-explanatory. To the Swedes, the main danger in a car seat is using it to forward face young children. They explicitly recommend rear-facing for all occupants and car seats that allow rear-facing until 55 pounds. Such seats don’t yet exist in the US as of 2017, but as late as Spring 2014, there was only one car seat sold in the entire country that allowed rear-facing until 50 pounds (the Clek Foonf). Now there are many more–the Clek Fllo, the Clek Foonf, the Diono Rainier, the Graco Extend2Fit, the Graco Extend2Fit 3-in-1, the Graco 4Ever Extend2Fit, the Nuna Rava, the Safety 1st Advance EX 65 Air+, and the Safety 1st Grow and Go EX Air. Things have improved immensely, but we still have a ways to go in all elements of transportation safety and in child traffic safety. The key takeaway is to max out your seat to its height and weight limits, and ideally to do whatever possible to rear-face until at least 4 or 5.
What Do I Do With This Information? What If I Want To Know More?
There are more questions to answer, but this is a good start. You can read far more on the NTF site; if you don’t read Swedish, you can use built-in browser translators or head over to Google Translate or your favorite translation tool. But the answers are rather clear in most cases. Resist the urge to follow one breathless study after another suggesting something’s good one week and bad the next. Rear-facing is what’s safest no matter how young or old a passenger vehicle occupant is. Aim for at least 4-5, and continue to booster until 10 to 12. Beyond that, drive as little as possible, and choose safe speeds and choose safe roads whenever you do. None of these steps require any money whatsoever aside from that for convertible or all-in-one seats, which are available for well under $200 (e.g., the Graco Extend2Fit, the Graco 4Ever Extend2Fit, the Safety 1st Advance EX 65 Air+, and the Safety 1st Grow and Go EX Air). The driving techniques are completely free and will far, far, far more of a difference than the safety benefits from buying the latest and greatest vehicles.
Is there any way you could drive less than you currently do?
One of the most basic, yet most effective, means of reducing our odds of death by auto traffic is to reduce our exposure to said traffic. I’ve written about this before, in terms of how we can double our driving safety by cutting our annual mileage in half. However, the information bears repeating, given the fact that we drive more, on average, in the United States than in any other country on the planet.
I find it helps to have international frames of reference when discussing driver safety, as it often provides us with a greater perspective of how things we take for granted in the US might not necessarily be the safest or even most practical ways of doing things. Today’s article will explore US driving rates across ages and compare them to a number of countries with a focus on Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. We’ll then extrapolate what death rates in each country would look like if each nation adopted the other’s driving habits.
Just how much do Americans drive per year, on average?
According to the Federal Highway Administration, Americans drive 13,476 miles per year on average. These figures vary significantly by age and gender, with men driving more than women at all stages of life. The peak driving ages for both genders occur between 35 and 54 for men, with an average just beneath 19,000 miles, and and between 20 and 34 for women, with an average of just over 12,000 miles. On average, then, the typical American drives a shade under 37 miles a day.
Per the IIHS, 35,092 Americans died from auto traffic in 2015, making it the worst year since 2008, where more than 37,000 died. The per capita death rate was 10.9 auto deaths per 100,000 residents, while the death rate per 100 million miles driven was 1.12.
Let’s look at how this compares to the average Norwegian, Swede, and Englishman or woman.
How many miles do Norwegians drive on average?
Per Statistisk Sentralbyra, or Statistics Norway, Norwegians drove an average of 12,289 km in 2015, or 7,636 miles per year. This translates to an average of 21 miles a day, or about 57% of the average US daily mileage.
Per SSB, 117 Norwegians died from auto traffic in 2015, making it the best year since 1948. I’ve written before about how Norway compares very favorably to the United States in auto safety, whether in overall fatalities or in child safety, and this was underscored in 2015. The per capita death rate was 2.2 auto deaths per 100,000 residents, which was one of the lowest in the world.
The 2016 IRTAD road safety report notes the peak fatality figures were reached in 1970 with 560 deaths. The report credits the dramatic drops in death rates since the 70s to a variety of causes, including safer cars, reduced speed limits, introductions of median barriers, and seat belt campaigns, as well as an overall Vision Zero strategy.
How many miles do Swedes drive on average?
Per Transport Analysis, Swedes drove an average of 12,216 km in 2015, or 7,591 miles per year. This translates to an average of just under 21 miles a day, or about 57% of the average US daily mileage.
Per Transport Analysis, 259 Swedes died from auto traffic in 2015. The 2016 IRTAD road safety report notes the peak fatality figures were reached in 1965 and 1966 with 1,313 deaths, and 2015’s figure appears to be Sweden’s lowest in modern history. The report credits the dramatic drops in death rates since the 60s to “safer cars, lower speeds, and the introduction of median barriers” – all elements of Vision Zero.
Per the UK Government’s Road Use Statistics 2016, the British drove an average of 6,488 miles in what appears to be 2013. This translates to an average of just under 18 miles a day, or about 49% of the average US daily mileage.
Per National Statistics, 1,732 Britons died from auto traffic in 2015, which appears to be the second best year in modern history after 2013, when 1713 died. This figure also represented a 46% drop in 10 years compared to the 3,201 death toll in 2005. The 2016 IRTAD road safety report notes the peak fatality figures were reached in 1941 with 9,000 deaths. In 2015, the per capita death rate was 2.7 auto deaths per 100,000, again one of the lowest in the world.
Interestingly, Sweden and the UK shared the same per capita death rate, indicating that the difference in total road deaths between the two countries could be entirely explained in 2015 due to the difference in total population between the two countries. There were approximately 6 Brits for every Swede, so with an identical death rate, the death toll was 6x higher in the UK than in Sweden.
How do the average miles driven by Americans affect our annual road death toll?
We’ve established that Americans drive more miles per day (and by extension, per year) than Norwegians, Swedes, and Britons, on average. However, the next step in figuring out how our driving patterns–or more specifically, the extent of our driving–affect our annual road death toll. To put the numbers into focus, let’s compare each of the three countries to the US.
If Americans drove as few miles as Norwegians or Swedes (i.e., 21 miles a day, or 57% of 37 miles a day), instead of 35,092 deaths in 2015, we’d have had approximately 20,002 deaths, representing 15,090 lives saved.
If Americans drove as few miles as the British (i.e., 18 miles a day, or 49% of 37 miles a day), instead of 35,092 deaths in 2015, we’d have had approximately 17,195 deaths, representing 17,897 lives saved.
That’s huge.
How would the annual fatality rate in the US change if the per capita death rate were the same as those in Norway, Sweden, or the UK?
Now that we’ve compared how many fewer road deaths the US would suffer annually if we reduced our driving rates to those found in Norway, Sweden, and the UK, let’s compare how the annual fatality rate would change if we shared per capita rates with those countries. This figure is particularly interesting when combined with the changes based on mileage, as the closer the road death toll from a modified per capita rate is to the road death toll from a modified mileage, the more our mileage (i.e., amount of driving) explains our per capita rate.
To put it simply, if adopting the per capita death rates of other countries wouldn’t give us significantly different annual death tolls than if we simply adopted other countries’ driving frequencies, this suggests the primary problem in the US with respect to road safety is simply how much we’re driving. On the other hand, if the modified road death toll from a modified per capita rate isn’t close to that of a modified road death toll from a modified driving rate, it suggests the US’ road safety issues are primarily due to other factors (e.g., the safety of the road network or the safety of our vehicles). The availability of other transportation options (e.g., buses and trains) also counts as a separate factor that could explain the difference in safety. Let’s see.
If the US shared Norway’s per capita death rate (2.2 instead of 10.9 deaths per 100,000 citizens), instead of 35,092 deaths in 2015, we’d have had approximately 7,083 deaths, representing 28,009 lives saved.
If the US shared Sweden or the UK’s per capita death rate (2.7 instead of 10.9 deaths per 100,000 citizens), instead of 35,092 deaths in 2015, we’d have had approximately 8,693 deaths, representing 26,399 lives saved.
Once again, this is huge.
Which matters more? Reducing driving rates or the overall per capita death rate?
Comparing the projected fatalities from the two types of adjustments (by mileage and by per capita rates) shows much, much bigger drops in total deaths by changing per capita rates than by changing driving rates.
Adopting Norwegian per capita death rates would result in roughly 1/3rd of the deaths we’d have if we simply adopted their driving rates.
Adopting Swedish per capita death rates would result in fewer than 1/2 of the deaths we’d have if we simply adopted their driving rates.
Adopting British per capita death rates would result in just over 1/2 of the deaths we’d have if we simply adopted their driving rates.
As a result, it looks like the primary reasons for much greater safety results in the leading countries as compared to the US cannot simply be explained by the fact that they drive less (although that explanation is the leading factor in the UK-US comparison). There are a range of other factors at work, including an overall pattern of safer driving habits, safer vehicle options, a safer road network, and more public transportation alternatives.
However, does this meant that it’s not worth driving less? Absolutely not. The fact is that we could immediately chop off 43-51% of our annual road death toll simply by committing to drive at roughly half our current rates. This applies at the national, state, local, and personal level. The majority of the difference in death tolls cannot be explained primarily by driving rates, but driving rates remain one of the largest factors in affecting that difference.
Advocate for safer road systems, for public transportation. Advocate for safer vehicles and for safer driving practices. However, in the mean time, drive less, and encourage your loved ones to do the same. It’s quite possibly the single most effective driving technique you can master.
Your kindergärtner doesn’t need a car seat on this vehicle. But if s/he’s in a car, then yes. Ideally rear-facing, but forward-facing is fine.
One of the most frequent questions I get via email involves whether or not it’s okay to place kindergärtners in seat belts. In case you don’t have the time to read further, it isn’t. Another frequent question along the same lines is whether kindergartners can safely use booster seats. This answer is far less black-and-white, but typically, if you’re asking the question, the answer for your child should be “no” (I’ll go into why shortly). A final question are from parents who know that no kindergarten-aged child should use a seat belt and that many at that age aren’t yet capable of using booster seats safely; the question here at this stage typically involves whether forward-facing seats are the best choice for kindergartners or whether they should still be rear-facing. My answer here is the most controversial: it’s fine to forward-face, but it’s still better to rear-face if your child continues to fit his or her car seat by weight and height.
That was the short version. Let’s look at each of these questions in detail below. And as a reference, “kindergartner” in this article primarily refers to a typically-developing child between the ages of 5 and 6, but it also applies to 4-year-olds, who also attend kindergarten depending on cutoff dates in a number of states, provinces, boroughs, and territories across the US, Canada, and elsewhere in the world.
Is it safe, okay, or legal to put kindergärtners in seat belts? If not, why shouldn’t a kindergarten-aged child use a seat belt?
This isn’t my favorite question to answer because it’s one that makes the best (at least the child is restrained at all) of a bad situation (it’s an inappropriate restraint). On the other hand, it can serve as a conversation starter for parents and caregivers, and even if many who hear an answer they don’t like hearing tune it out, there are always some parents who make safer decisions after acquiring new information, so it’s always worth trying to spread and share best practices.
First of all, it’s not safe to put kindergärtners in seat belts.
Yes, it’s safer than having them bouncing around the back (or front) seat unbelted, but at the same time, it also exposes them to a number of unnecessary and potentially fatal risks. Why? Because seat belts are designed for adults and adolescents. The lap belt is designed to cross the lap while lying on the thighs while the shoulder belt is designed to cross from the waist past the shoulder blade. The shoulder belt isn’t the big worry here in a crash; it’s the lap belt. A kindergarten-sized child will have such a belt across her stomach, which means that in a crash, she runs a high risk of either a.) “submarining”, i.e., slipping completely out from beneath the seat belt due to the inertia she’ll carry in a crash or b.) suffering a number of internal organ injuries due to the belt crushing her stomach as she flies into it at 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70…mph. Neither scenario is one we want our kids exposed to, and both scenarios can easily lead to fatalities or to children suffering lifelong debilitating injuries or paralyses. Seat belts are never a good idea for kindergarten-aged kids unless you simply no other options besides seat belts or traveling unrestrained…and in those situations, I’d recommend walking unless it’s literally a life and death situation.
So no, it’s not safe, and it’s not okay. That said, it is legal in many states.
Due to a combination of an insane car culture and representatives more interested in (insert lobbyist-drafted proposal here) than in protecting our population from the dangers of metal boxes hurled at each other all day long at high speeds, many states don’t explicitly require child car seats beyond infancy; a few require some form of child restraint for some years afterward, but you’re almost guaranteed to be able to travel anywhere in the US without risking being pulled over for having a kindergartner in a seat belt.
But now you know better, it’s time to do better. Which brings us to the next stage of kindergartner auto safety enlightenment…
Is it safe, okay, or legal to put kindergärtners in a booster seat? If not, why shouldn’t a kindergarten-aged child use a booster?
I vastly prefer this question to the previous, because it indicates that the parents are at least using some form of car seat, or are considering doing so. The answer is also far less black-and-white than the seat belt question (which, once again, is no). Is it safe to booster a kindergartner? The answer is maybe, but generally not. Or in other words, it depends.
I recently wrote about Swedish policies regarding car seat use. In one of the two wealthy countries on Earth where children are least likely to die from car traffic (the other being Norway), the standard practice is to move children directly from rear-facing seats into high-back booster seats, with no forward-facing seat stage in between.
However, children are regularly rear-faced until 4 or 5 in Sweden. So what gives?
In Sweden, the reasoning is that harnessed seats a.) aren’t any safer than booster seats once kids reach an appropriate age for their use, and b.) that harnessed seats may increase neck loads due to restraining the body but not the head (which is the same reasoning behind the creation and use of HANS devices in auto racing) compared to seat belts in booster seats, which allow a more fluid movement of the torso and head. In the US, despite widespread advocacy for forward-facing seats over boosters, studies have yet to show a safety difference between harnessed seats and booster seats once children are old enough to sit properly in either (i.e., straight and centered).
The question then becomes not whether booster seats are safe for kindergartners, but whether your kindergartner can sit safely in a booster seat, even while asleep. Some children can do so by 5. Most children can do so by 7. Almost no children will do so at 4. The Swedes make it work at 5 by using high-back boosters, which keep kids’ heads positioned properly even when asleep. However, this still requires a child who will sit responsibly while awake. You have to know your children to know when this will be feasible for them.
So is it okay? It depends on your child. Is it legal? Throughout the United States, yes.
Personally, I think two of the best dedicated boosters on the market today are the Clek Oobr and Maxi-Cosi RodiFix, and I’d give the edge to the RodiFix because, like most Swedish car seats (and European ones in general), it doesn’t feature cup holders. The lack of arm rests also means your kids won’t get the seat belts stuck on them while buckling themselves in. If you’re on a smaller budget, the Britax Parkway also does a great job. Whichever seat you choose, it’s worth looking for ones that include LATCH connectors, as these will allow you to permanently attach the seats to your vehicle, preventing them from becoming projectiles when they aren’t buckled in.
The remaining questions are easier to answer; they’re just ever-higher levels of safety.
Is it safe, okay, or legal to forward-face kindergärtners? If not, why shouldn’t a kindergarten-aged child be forward-facing?
Yes, it’s safe, okay, and legal to forward-face kindergärtners. The only practical reasons why a kindergarten-aged child shouldn’t be forward-facing are if a.) she no longer fits her seat by height or weight, or b.) you have the opportunity to continue rear-facing in her current seat. It takes the work out of figuring out whether or not your child is ready for a booster seat; you just buckle her into the seat and continue using it until she outgrows it.
If you’re looking for specific forward-facing seat recommendations, I’m always a fan of the Britax Frontier and Pinnacle, due to how long they allow kids to be harnessed before converting into long-lived booster seats. Between the two, I prefer the Frontier because it gives more options for 3 across car seat installations.
Is it safe, okay, or legal to rear-face kindergärtners? If not, why shouldn’t a kindergarten-aged child be rear-facing?
An Extend2Fit is a cheap and easy way to keep rear-facing until kindergarten.
Finally, while very few people in the US would entertain the idea of rear-facing a kindergärtner, this is ultimately the safest option out there. Rear-facing doesn’t stop being much safer than forward-facing when children grow older; it’s safer at all stages of life, and that includes in adulthood. However, it becomes increasingly difficult as kids enter the elementary years simply because there are very few seats with the height and weight limits necessary to accommodate children in these sizes. However, there are a few out there.
In Sweden, you can buy car seats that allow you to rear-face all the way to 55 pounds, potentially allowing rear-facing until 6 or even longer. In the US, our best seats–such as the Graco Extend2Fit, Clek Fllo, Diono Rainier, Clek Foonf–allow you to rear-face until 50 pounds, which is a great improvement over how the car seat scene looked just a few years ago here. Fifty pounds will be enough to allow you to make it until at least 4 or 5, which is how long you’ll find the typical Swedish child rear-facing. The kids don’t protest it there because their parents treat it as normal, as do their grandparents and everyone else they come into contact with.
Among the US seats, the Extend2Fit is my favorite example for this phase, as it not only features one of the highest weight limits at 50 lbs, it also features the highest height limit (it’s 49″, or the same as the forward-facing height limit), which means you’ll might even be able to rear-face until 6 or 7 if you really want to, depending on the height and weight of your child. Growth charts indicate that a 50th percentile boy or girl (the charts are the same) won’t reach 50 pounds until age 7 and 49″ until 7.5.
In summary, rear-facing a kindergärtner is the safest option out there. It’s okay if you choose to do so, and yes, it’s legal. It’s our approach with our children–just as it is in Sweden.
35,000 Americans will die this year on the road. You don't have to be one of them. A car seat and car safety blog to promote best practices for families.
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