Rear-Facing Child Car Seats: Response From Dorel, Manufacturers of Maxi-Cosi

LONDON - Dorel (UK) Ltd, the world’s biggest manufacturer of nursery and children’s products and makers of Maxi-Cosi seats, has responded to today’s report - published in the British Medical Journal - which suggests that children should stay in a rear-facing child car seat until the age of four:

“There are some pure safety arguments for the benefit of travelling backwards in the event of an accident. This also applies to adults travelling by rail, for example.

“We recommend parents to keep their child in rear-facing infant carriers for as long as possible and not to switch to a more convenient forward facing seat at the earliest opportunity. However, most parents around the world eventually make the change because rearward facing child car seats are simply impractical in most situations. They take up a huge amount of room in the car, usually necessitating the front seats to be moved forward, and they don’t even fit in some smaller cars. Unless the child is given sufficient legroom, he or she will be cramped against the car’s seatback. It can be incredibly difficult for a parent to get a larger child into such a seat and the fitting system is often very complex, increasing the chance of incorrect fitting.

“The most effective way to improve child safety in car seats is to ensure that the child is correctly fitted into the seat and the seat is correctly fitted into the car. This is why publications such as Which? look at ease of fitting when assessing child car seats along with crash test performance. Maxi-Cosi car seats are consistently ranked in the top few by the European independent testing of car seats as reported in Which? and we strongly believe that real car safety is derived from the best combination of ease of use, ensuring correct fitting and excellent crash test results.

“In addition, although rearward facing is arguably the safest travelling position, most of us prefer not to travel that way. It reduces the growing child’s ability to interact with those in the front seats, to look around and see where they are going.”

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Source: Dorel (UK) Ltd

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