How safe are Swedish rear facing car seats?
This question comes up fairly often in the avalanche of emails received each day at CarSeat.se. How safe is my child when riding rear facing in a Britax Multi Tech, Maxi Cosi Mobi, DuoLogic, etc? The answer is unbelievably safe.
There is research which show the tremendous rear facing benefits for young children but not much for children aged 2-5. Why is this? It’s because no other country keep children rear facing as long as Sweden, the recommendation is rear facing to at least 4 years of age. A recommendation followed by a large percentage of parents.
Sweden has been rear facing children since 1965 and have a tremendous amount of research and real life experience showing just how great rear facing is. Back to the question of just how safe rear facing is.
Statistics, data, research and real life experiences accumulated over all these years show children almost never die or become seriously injured in correctly installed Swedish seats. Most often it takes a tragic, unsurvivable and catastrophic accident to cause great damage to a child. What does this mean? It means accidents not possible to survive regardless of seats used. Examples are a car skidding into a river, fire, or being hit by a very large vehicle at high speed, etc. Tragic but extremely unlikely events.
In both 2007 and 2008 only 2 children died in traffic accidents in Sweden in ages 0-6. These accidents were catastrophic and unsurvivable. That’s a phenomenal safety record which show the huge rear facing benefits and also what a great job parents are doing with car seat safety.
The exclusive rear facing club
In my younger pre-children days I bought a new Corvette. It was a fantastic experience in every way. I had no idea I also joined an invisible club of proud Corvette owners who cared about each other. Reminds me a lot about all the parents doing extended rear facing today.
Every other Corvette owner was always greeted with a wave, a handshake or a conversation. In the grocery store, party, tennis club, restaurant, golf course, gym, or any other place. We weren’t that many but we stuck together, like parents today who keep kids rear facing to age 3, 4, or 5 years of age.
Parents who do extended rear facing are amazingly helpful to others. Yesterday I had someone in New Zealand who planned on buying some Britax Multi Tech seats but wanted to see one “live” first. I contacted a previous customer in the area and asked if she could possibly help out. “Of course, I love my seat. Send her over and I’ll give a demonstration!”, was the answer. I felt like sending over an extra seat as a thank you:-)
“You want me to remove my Multi Tech, take some detailed photos of the tethers, take photos of a forward facing installation and then drive over to my friend who has the same VW Golf as you do and install the Multi Tech rear facing and take more photos? No problem, just give me 30 minutes and I’ll get back to you.”
Being this helpful to complete strangers is standard stuff among Corvette owners ERF parents. It’s really fantastic to see such involvement. And we’re just getting started in most places, just wait until we really get parents involved.
That Corvette was very special to me at one point but now seem embarrassingly unimportant. Today I would much rather hang out with any of the many ERF parents around the world;-)
