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.