European car seats with Impact Shield?

lenats31 said:

I guess there is nothing that can stop them from advertising for their products no matter what they must say in order to get a sale

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This, exactly. Reminds me if a certain rep for another brand whose name starts with R and rhymes with "muss".

Extended rearfacing is just starting in Europe. So I think one of the problems right now is that there aren´t any accidents involving large Swedish seats - not enough I think to make a direct comparison. So they can say all of this and not end up in a legal situation for misleading information. Maybe in a few years time...

Does this mean that my 33lb 3 year old would not be safe in a Kiddy World Plus?

turtlemama said:

Does this mean that my 33lb 3 year old would not be safe in a Kiddy World Plus?

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Here's my take on this: Rear-facing is safest. Forward facing is a step down. Whether ffing in a shield booster or in a 5 point harness, it's still less safe than rear-facing. I don't know if at this time we can say which one is safer, just as we can't say whether booster or ffing harness is safer for a kid who can sit properly in a booster and is over 4 years old. Kids's lives have been saved by overhead shield seats and T-shield seats, so I wouldn't be worried about a fmvss approved car seat being unsafe. It may be less safe than another way of being restrained, though.

Good discussion. A few points:

- At age 2 children should sit rear facing since this is 500%, or five times, safer.

- The Kiddy system is not any safer than a regular forward facing five point harnessed seat. Saying that it's as safe or safer than a rear facing seat is of course complete nonsense.

- Shield seats perform quite ok and neck loads are slightly lower than a regular FF harnessed seat. The forces are still huge and far larger than any rear facing seat.

Forces have to be absorbed by something in a frontal collision. They can't just disappear. With shield seats this is in the neck and also abdominal area. Forces in the abdominal area are huge and also not measured.

- Forward facing seats, 5-point, shield or boosters, have one giant problem and that is in collisions from the side. In real life we see that a child sitting in a five point harness, shield or high back booster seats is most often unprotected in collisions from the side.

This has to do with forward momentum and pre-impact breaking as pointed out earlier. This is how real life accidents look. It's nasty and we can't do anything about it.

A child in a shield seat, hbb or harnessed seat will therefore have head/neck thrown forward just before impact leaving this area virtually unprotected. A larger head support doesn't help since children then sit with head bent forward before accident.

Through real life experience and research we see that collisions from the side work very different in real life than in the lab. All the fancy names for side impact protection in forward facing seats therefore work well in the lab with a vehicle standing still but real life look very different. Side impact protection in real life is horrible regardless of brand.

We can also see this in research which show that a booster cushion provide basically the same protection as a high back booster and a five point harness despite not having a high back.

- A child sitting in a rear facing seat is pushed further into the seat moments before impact due to the forward momentum and pre-impact breaking. This is why RF kids are so well protected in these accidents. It's simply physics

- Another issue with shield seat is that a majority of children find them extremely uncomfortable. Anything except for a 10-minute ride is not comfortable for most. Imagine having a large pillow pressed against your chest/face and barely being able to move your arms. That's a comfort issue but these do of course also affect safety through our habits.

Does this mean that my 33lb 3 year old would not be safe in a Kiddy World Plus?

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Safety will be about the same as a high back booster or a regular 5-point harnessed seat. It will be 500%, of five times, less safe than rear facing.

I refuse to believe that a *properly installed* rear-facing seat is less safe than a shield booster (Kiddy or otherwise). It just doesn't make sense, physics-wise. In this instance, Kiddy isn't comparing apples to apples. I can see how there are decreased neck loads in a 5pt harness vs a shield booster, but I absolutely cannot wrap my head around how a 2 year old (for example) would be safer in a shield booster than rear-facing seat (provided they were both installed and used correctly.).

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You are correct. A rear facing car seat is 500%, or five times safer, than a forward facing seat. People who work with cars sets laugh about these claims.