front seat

So...I saw a girl in my son's preschool class riding ff in her car seat in the front seat. Is this ever safe??? Is it ever legal???

If there are no available seats in the back then it could be the safest spot for her. I don't know what the situation is, but say they have 3 RF seats and 1 FF seat, and an airbag in the front....the FF seat would have to go up front. That being said, they would need a top tether anchor for her seat. I guess it really just depends on what the set up is. Without all of the details it is hard to say if it is safe or legal.

It should be used as a last resort, so if all the other seating positions were taken up by other children, then that might have been the safest spot for her. Some newer vehicles have the option of turning the front airbag off (although there is a debate about whether or not that works properly) so they could have had her up there with the airbag off. If there were any other seating positions available, then what you saw was not the safest option.

Sometimes the front seat is the safest option--such as with a booster and lapbelts only in the back, or with a vehicle that has no front passenger airbag (early 90s or older) that has better occupant protection in the front versus back, or when the other seating positions are all occupied. I had my son in the front passenger seat (he's 14 now) almost all the time, because he had medical problems that required constant supervision. He was there from being a newborn until my second son was born when he was almost 2--at which time I got a new car that did have a front airbag and both kids were in the back.

Whether or not it's legal depends on the province. I believe it's perfectly legal in Alberta. It's illegal in Quebec and I believe one of the Atlantic provinces--someone here might know. Most of us only know our own provincial laws

-Nicole.

I think its illegal in Ontario too, but not much you can do.

She and her father were the only people in the car and it was a newer hatchback (Mazda). I can't imagine any good reason for it, but if you guys aren't horrified, I won't stir the pot by talking to them.

It's legal in NS, but only recommended as a last resort.

That said, I've done it with an 8 year old in a booster when I had a full car and had to go somewhere.

In NS it is recommended that all children 12 and under sit in the back seat - it is not illegal for them to sit in the front.

It is, however, illegal to use a FF carseat without a top tether anchor in Canada. There is no top tether anchor position for the front seat (I believe) of any car.

You can use a booster. To make it as safe as possible with an activated airbag, pull the front seat back all the way, and make sure the child is positioned correctly at all times.

Just to clear up some of this...

Although yes, it is illegal to use a FF carseat without the top tether in Canada, there are tether anchor positions in a number of vehicles behind the front passenger seat. For example--Ford has tether anchors on the back of the front passenger seats of most of it's late model minivans. Furthermore, in this situation you can use a temporary tether to either the male portion of the belt, or to a locked or the webbing of a buckled belt--keeping in mind that the belt needs to be locked or fully extended to properly do so. Both of these options are perfectly legal.

It may actually be safer to use a harnessed versus booster seat in this situation. Head excursion numbers are lower with harnessed seats as a result of the additional restraint they supply. If using a booster in the front passenger seat, and it is developmentally appropriate to do so, it is recommended to use a lowback over a highback because the backs on boosters do push a child further towards the airbag. I would be comfortable with a low profile harnessed restraint or a lowback booster in the front passenger seat in front of any advanced (dual/multi-stage) airbag system if the seating position was needed. In fact--we had a five passenger vehicle until last year and I transported my four kids in it on a regular basis with a boostered child in the front.

When using the front passenger seating position in a vehicle with a front passenger airbag, always ensure that the seat is fully pushed back--away from the airbag. And as always, never use a rear-facing restraint in front of an active airbag (ok, everyone knows this one but I'm saying it anyways for search engine and archive purposes.)

-N.

Kat_Shoshin said:

In NS it is recommended that all children 12 and under sit in the back seat - it is not illegal for them to sit in the front.

It is, however, illegal to use a FF carseat without a top tether anchor in Canada. There is no top tether anchor position for the front seat (I believe) of any car.

You can use a booster. To make it as safe as possible with an activated airbag, pull the front seat back all the way, and make sure the child is positioned correctly at all times.

Click to expand...

ETA
If this needs to poof off into the tech forum, can on e of the mods please move it for me.

I was just thinking about this - so in theory could you have 3 seats in the back, the outboard or center one with latch as available, and tether to the unused seatbelt? Or would having to route the tether between installed CRs preclude this method of tethering? And, now that I think of it... has there ever been any mention/research of tethering to a latch bar? I wouldn't do this unless I heard something official ok'ing it, but I just thought of this in terms of the 3 across if you had to use seatbelts only in the back but wanted a harnessed seat in the front as well...

It's fine here, since in the tech forum things are pretty American heavy and they would probably want to say "just don't tether" Yes, you can do three across and then tether to an unused belt when using LATCH. Although it may be difficult to ensure that the belt doesn't interfere with any of the back seat installs while also ensuring that it's not too far off-centre. So it may not be doable in some cases because of this.

As for tethering to LOWER anchors.. I'm going to say no on this one. Primarily because of the difference between the advertised weight loads of the top versus bottom anchors. Also keeping in mind that the lower anchors work in conjunction with one another to restrain the restraint/child. Although I don't know for sure that a lower anchor would fail, and even if it did at that point it would likely have limited head excursion sufficiently for the large portion of the crash event. Hopefully Trudy will comment on this with regards to anything she has heard or whether or not there's any recent research/testing on this.

-Nicole.

Thanks Nicole. It did seem a bit far-fetched but I had to ask. I always thought that the TAs had a higher stated limit because we didn't expect them to see as much load from the CR as the lower anchors, so it was ok to use it with a larger child. But obviously not having tested it this way would make it a no-no, so I wondered if anyone had ever thought to try. I guess at this point we assume you get vehicles with specific built in latch and TAs and anything else is SOL, aside from the "fixes" based on old research like using the seatbelt. I suppose also that there would be some chance of the deforming lower latch impacting the performance of the rear seat CRs where the seatbelt is anchored down to the floor and may not act the same. Will hope to hear something from Trudy.