I'm so confused.

agave

New member
Yesterday morning my husband went to move the carseats into his car and sent me this link. http://www.car-safety.org/rearface.html

Then started trying to convince me to turn our 3 yr old FF for comfort. I'm wondering if he actually read it. Maybe it was the part about RF not being as safe in a rear end crash, since I was in one last week. I just can't figure out why he's trying to use an article about keeping kids RF longer to convince me to FF. :banginghead: I went out to the car later and made sure they where installed RF.
 
ADS

Ninetales

New member
Rear end crashes are rarely serious.
Silly. I know you know all this but for anyone else who might not:

RFing is so much safer for the vast majority of crashes that it makes more sense to hedge your bets.

Even in serious rear end crashes, RF is safe. I don't know the link but I've seen a woman post her story involving a 65 mph rear end crash where the only one without any injury was the RFing toddler.
 

agave

New member
I swear his logic sensors are out of whack. If your trying to convince someone to turn a kid FF find a link that isn't promoting RF. My neck is hurts and I had a headache for about a week and a few other minor issues. But the kids who where both RF and closer to the impact seem to be just fine.

My car seems to be a magnet for people who aren't watching where they are going. I've been hit with the kids in the car twice now, I guess the good thing is every time I get seats that RF a little bit longer. I'd really rather they leave me alone though.
 

Qarin

New member
A rear-impact in a non-tethered rear-facing seat is going to be better than forward-facing- when you're FF and rear-ended, you're first pushed back into your headrest (which is good, assuming you have support to at least halfway up your head), but then your head will throw itself forward while your body is held by the seatbelt/harness. You're experiencing the pain from this now. A rearfacing child seat seat, though, will move with the child, keeping head/neck/body aligned, throughout the motion toward the rear of the vehicle and then back toward toward the front. A tethered seat likely acts similarly, as the tether is not nearly as firm as the bolted attachment a regular car's seat has (keeping it steady while the occupant moves), but I think it should be really clear when thinking of a non-tethered seat how much different the cradling of it is than you get with a forward facing seat/carseat.
 

SafeDad

CPSDarren - Admin
Staff member
Yesterday morning my husband went to move the carseats into his car and sent me this link. http://www.car-safety.org/rearface.html

Then started trying to convince me to turn our 3 yr old FF for comfort. I'm wondering if he actually read it. Maybe it was the part about RF not being as safe in a rear end crash, since I was in one last week. I just can't figure out why he's trying to use an article about keeping kids RF longer to convince me to FF. :banginghead: I went out to the car later and made sure they where installed RF.

Out of context, you can find something to rationalize a choice in just about any resource, even one that is overall contrary to the choice you want to make.

A rear-impact in a non-tethered rear-facing seat is going to be better than forward-facing- when you're FF and rear-ended, you're first pushed back into your headrest (which is good, assuming you have support to at least halfway up your head), but then your head will throw itself forward while your body is held by the seatbelt/harness. You're experiencing the pain from this now. A rearfacing child seat seat, though, will move with the child, keeping head/neck/body aligned, throughout the motion toward the rear of the vehicle and then back toward toward the front. A tethered seat likely acts similarly, as the tether is not nearly as firm as the bolted attachment a regular car's seat has (keeping it steady while the occupant moves), but I think it should be really clear when thinking of a non-tethered seat how much different the cradling of it is than you get with a forward facing seat/carseat.

In a rear-end crash, an untethered rear-facing seat still comes to a sudden stop before it rebounds forward. It may be later than a tethered seat and possibly less energetic (depending on the installation and other factors), but it still happens. Unlike a rear-facing seat in a frontal crash, the occupant is not being pushed into the shell of the seat but the two are initially accelerating at the same rate. At some point, the occupant is either going to jerk to a stop against the harness or by hitting a seat cushion or head restraint before moving toward the front of the car again. Fortunately, rear-facing crashes tend to be much less energetic than frontal crashes, so tethered or untethered, even babies are much more likely to be able to withstand the forces involved.
 

Qarin

New member
In a rear-end crash, an untethered rear-facing seat still comes to a sudden stop before it rebounds forward. It may be later than a tethered seat and possibly less energetic (depending on the installation and other factors), but it still happens.

I've been unhappy with my answer all day, for this reason, and wondered who would point it out (it seemed like it'd be poor form for me to...); and so I have been thinking about it all day and have decided I'm actually still right- by the time the stop and direction change happen, a lot of energy will have already been dispersed, and especially because of the lower energy to start with in most rearend collisions, making that event substantially less stressful on the neck than the much sooner direction change that happens in a rearend collision to a person facing forward.

Or, so I am theorizing.
 

SafeDad

CPSDarren - Admin
Staff member
I've been unhappy with my answer all day, for this reason, and wondered who would point it out (it seemed like it'd be poor form for me to...); and so I have been thinking about it all day and have decided I'm actually still right- by the time the stop and direction change happen, a lot of energy will have already been dispersed, and especially because of the lower energy to start with in most rearend collisions, making that event substantially less stressful on the neck than the much sooner direction change that happens in a rearend collision to a person facing forward.

Or, so I am theorizing.

Correctly installed and used, I think any child seat option provides a great deal of protection and any risk would be very small. I suspect serious injuries to kids in a 5-point harness during a rear-end crash are uncommon enough that there simply aren't any statistics to compare.

So, going only on intuition, if I knew I was going to be in a very severe (and also very rare) rear-end crash today, I'd prefer to see my own child in a forward-facing seat over a rear-facing one. I'd much rather have my child cradled by the shell of the FF carseat while the vehicle is crushing than take chances with whatever uncontrolled stop happens in a RF seat during a rear impact. A close second would be a rear-facing seat like a True Fit Premier with an anti-rebound bar that would tend to provide a somewhat more gradual stop than a RF tether but still minimize the head excursion. For an older toddler or small child rear-facing in a rear-end crash, I'd also rather see them with a RF tether than without one. The potential for head excursion would be more of a concern to me than other forces. Having the head strike a pillar or other part of the interior has the potential for very serious injury, especially if the installation is anything short of ideal.
 

agave

New member
Thanks every one, there is a lot of good info here about what happens in a rear end crash. Having my kids facing the breaking windshield and the F250 plowing my little xb was pretty freaky. Luckily they seem to be just fine. It also really freaked out my 3 year old. Money is super tight but in a little over 5 years my car has been hit 4 times by much larger vehicles, twice with both kids in the car. Twice I have been rear ended by pickups while stopped at a stop light. Every time I've been very impressed with how well my car did in the crash but I feel like I'm driving around with a big target. I'm so ready for a new car, I'm not sure what I'll get next but there will be more space between the back bumper and my kids and very brightly colored. I never had any trouble when I was driving my orange truck 30,000 miles a year.

As for my husband's crazy logic, I'm not sure anyone can help that.
 

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