Seating Children In Cars
Where should my children sit in my car if I am transporting more than one child?
Stephanie Tombrello, National Child Passenger Safety Instructor, SafetyBeltSafe USAWell if we all had just one child, we would put them in the center of the backseat because that's the safest location in the car. However, many times you're transporting more than one child, and unless you decide to choose one of them to be your favorite child, and I don't know many parents who are willing to do that, certainly no grandparents. You'd have to use another system. We suggest that you put the child who's riding most safely in the least safe location. So it's a little counter intuitive. For example, supposing I had three children, one of them was a child who's under two and in a rear-facing safety seat, another child was over two and in a safety seat that's forward facing with a full harness and a top tether strap attached; the third child is perhaps five or six and using a booster seat. The way I would arrange them in the car if I had the shoulder lap belt in each position, is to put the booster child in the center, because that child has the least protection of those three children.[text on screen:] FACT: The safest seat in the vehicle is the center rear seat. The safest child's car seat is a rear-facing safety seat. [Stephanie Tombrello] I would put the rear-facing child on the outside, and the forward-facing child with the top tether strap on the other outside position. If I had only the two younger children, I would put the rear-facing child on the outboard position next to the door, and the forward-facing child in the center.
Where should my child sit in a vehicle that has no rear seats?
Well, the first thing is to decide whether it's important for your child to ride in this vehicle. If you do have a vehicle that has no back seat, that vehicle will come with some system for disabling the airbag. If it does not, you can apply to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for permission to have your airbag disconnected. Never put a rear-facing child in a seat in front of a front passenger airbag. That is almost certainly going to be instant brain death. What happens is, as always happens in a collision, everything moves towards the point of impact, so the safety seat is moving toward the front. Passenger airbags only deploy in frontal crashes, so you know that the seat is going to be going toward the front of the vehicle, as the airbag comes out at anywhere from 100 to 200 miles per hour. When it slams into the back of the child restraint, the children are usually brain-dead from the force of the impact.
