Ford Focus allowing both LATCH and seat belt?

brooklynsmommy

Active member
I asked Judi and she said that there is a thread here somewhere. I can't find it though.

While looking through my cousin's 2011 Ford Focus manual, I noticed that it says that you can use both latch and a seat belt. At first I thought that perhaps they were just talking about the top tether. Nope. They specify top tether when talking about it alone. Why are they allowing this?
 
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Pixels

New member
All of the newer Fords are doing this.

Right now, we can't do both because it's not allowed by either vehicle or carseat manufacturer. If that's going to change, someone has to take the lead. Ford is now allowing it, but you still can't do it because in general it's not allowed by the manufacturer.

Combi allows doing both. Install first (tightly) with LATCH. Then route the seatbelt through the belt path and lock the belt, but do not tighten. The purpose is to prevent strangulation hazard with the belt.
 

mrscompumike

New member
We had a 2000 Chevy Venture van and got a latch seat for it but my husband did not like the vehicle belt just hanging so he buckled it than put the car seat in front of it. We used the latch system to install Tom's car seat. That way the vehicle seat belt was secure and not hanging loose. We did not tighten the vehicle belt.
 

Pixels

New member
We had a 2000 Chevy Venture van and got a latch seat for it but my husband did not like the vehicle belt just hanging so he buckled it than put the car seat in front of it. We used the latch system to install Tom's car seat. That way the vehicle seat belt was secure and not hanging loose. We did not tighten the vehicle belt.

This is a pretty common way to deal with the problem. :) The other way to do it is to install first and then buckle in a way that doesn't mess with the seat. I route the belt over a RFing seat, so it ends up where the child's feet go, or tunnel it underneath the seat. I can't buckle before installing in my car because the buckle gets in the way.
 

MommaWhitney

New member
I have an 09 seinna van and the car seat that is hooked in with latch I just locked the retractor and buckled the seat belt, then installed the seat. So now the seat belt cant be a strangulation hazord. We were told in our cpst class that you should suggest parents to do this with unused seat belts.
 

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