Quotes
"On behalf of ANEC - the European consumer voice in standardisation - we have studied accidents in the UK, Sweden and the United States involving children in child seats and have particularly looked at situations in which the children have been seriously injured or killed. We are in no doubt that the very safest way to carry children up to 4 years of age is rearward facing. In Scandinavia, they have used large rearward facing seats for many years and have convincing accident evidence that they do a good job. There are accident examples in all three countries of situations where children have suffered needless injuries whilst in their forward facing child seats. It is time to learn from the Nordic experience and for all parents to seek out suitable rear facing seats for their children until they are around 4 years old. Manufacturers, shops and legislators need to be active in making it easier and cheaper for parents to find and buy the safest form of restraint. It is crazy that the best seats are not readily available throughout Europe."
Dr. Peter Gloyns and James Roberts, Directors, Vehicle Safety Consultancy Ltd., UK
"In Sweden the authorities have campaigned for 25 years for children in cars to sit in special rearward-facing seats. The reason is that we want to avoid injuries to the head and neck region. The child's head is very heavy compared with the rest of the body. A nine-month-old baby's head comprises 25% of its total body weight, while in an adult the head weighs 6%. In a collision, the child's neck is subjected to a proportionally higher strain. In a rearward-facing seat, the force of a collision is distributed optimally over the child's head and back. Over a million rearward-facing seats are in use in Sweden, and we do not know of any cases where a child in a rearward-facing car seat has been seriously injured in a frontal collision. Swedish accident research has shown that rearward facing children's car seats reduce serious injuries by 92%, while the forward-facing seats only reduce injury by 60%. In the last few years the rest of Europe has also become aware of this. A number of cases are known in which children have been totally paralysed as a result of neck injuries while using forward-facing seats."
Thomas Turbell, VTI (Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute)
"When my daughter needed a group 1 car seat, I went around to all our local shops trying to find a rear facing one, as this is what everyone uses in my native Sweden. However, I was told that this type of seat was not available in the UK as "parents don't want them". I found this statement baffling as I knew that rear facing car seats are five times safer for the child in a frontal collision. I started to talk to my friends and relatives in the UK about this issue and found that they had never heard of rear facing car seats, so obviously had no idea whether they wanted them or not. I came to the conclusion that it‘s not that "parents don't want them" but more a case of parents not being informed that they exist and how much safer they are.
I contacted the leading car seat manufacturers but they were all very negative about introducing the Swedish type of rear facing seats in the UK, and continue to claim that it's the parents who don't want them.
I became so frustrated by their inability to care about the safety of the children in the UK that I decided to spread information about these seats myself, as far as I could. This led to the birth of the website www.rearfacing.co.uk in January 2008.
We have had more than 15,000 visitors in the last year and the sale of rear facing group 1 car seats in the UK has risen dramatically since the launch of the site, as more and more parents become aware of this issue.
I find that parents in the UK do want the safest possible seats for their children; they just need to know what their options are.
In January 2008, there was just a single shop in the UK selling rear facing group 1 car seats, and these were aimed at special needs children so many parents decided to import seats from other countries, mainly Sweden. But importing products for your children is a stressful business, especially if you don't know the language. Now rearfacingcarseats.com has been launched and the rearfacing team is very excited about the prospect of parents being able to read the information in English and order their seats from a UK website.
We are convinced that rear facing is the way forward for our children, and we know that if we all work together, we can turn things around!"
Helena Atkinson, Founder and Webmaster www.rearfacing.co.uk