Is your baby or toddler’s car seat installed correctly?
Every time your child gets into the car, remember these easy steps to check if your baby or toddler’s car seat is installed correctly.
Sadly, while most of the time parents know exactly what they need to do to care for their children, in many cases they might not even be aware of the risks they take, particularly when travelling with their children on the roads. Obviously, the most important thing is practicing safe driving but your child should also always be strapped safely in a car seat. Another important thing to consider is ensuring that the car seat is correctly installed.
Here are six tips to ensure your child’s car seat is installed correctly: A car seat is safely installed if it cannot move more than 2.5 cm when tugged at the base of the seats.
This only applies to infant and toddler seats and not booster seats. Make sure you follow the correct seatbelt path for the installation orientation:
- Rear-facing seat belt paths are indicated by blue markings on the seat – blue is for babies.
- Forward-facing seat belt paths are indicated by red markings on the seat: Red is for rascals.
- Isofix installations have indicators that turn from red to green if the installation is secure.
- An Isofix installation needs a third point of contact to finish installation. This will be either a back-tether strap, load leg, or brace mounted on the car seat.
- Follow the steps in your instruction manual to the letter for the stage and orientation of the seat you are using.
- It’s also important that the harness fits correctly: the harness must be at shoulder level or slightly below for rear-facing seats, or at shoulder level or slightly above for forward-facing seats. The harness must fit snug as a hug and you must be able to fit your hand in under the buckle of the harness.
Is it safe to have a car seat in the front passenger seat?
It is much safer to ride in the back, but sometimes you have more kids than seats in the back, so the eldest can ride in the front as a last resort. Airbag warnings are given for rear-facing car seats. If you have to use your rear-facing car seat in the front of your vehicle, make sure you can turn the airbags off. If you cannot turn the airbags off, you simply have to use the car seat in the back. With forward-facing car seats and airbags, it gets complicated. You can install these seats on the front seat, but you have to make sure that the child will not be in the way of the airbag when it deploys. A good idea is to put the front passenger seat a little bit back.
