High-Back Booster vs 5 Point Harness for 5 YO?

Hi, I was googling for info on high-backed boosters vs car seats with five point harness and found this site. Hope you will have some good info for me.

My daughter is about 5.5 years old, and about 42 inches tall and maybe 37 pounds. She is currently in a Britax car seat that is safe for her size. However, for various reasons life would be easier if she were in a high-backed booster with a regular seat belt. (Car pool pickup after school, moving seats around when we transport friends, etc.) None of this is enough to justify switching if she's truly safer in a 5 point harness, but I haven't been able to find real info explaining why she would be. She sits nicely in the car and doesn't nap.

Any feedback? Thanks!

I would be okay with booster trying a little bit then letting her use a booster for playdates. I wouldn't for a 4y but for an older kid there is no proof that a 5-point is safer then boosters for older kids.

Do you pick her up? If so I would work on her buckling herself. Our dd2 is 4y4m and does great buckling herself.

I would look at the graco turbo. It fits young riders well.

Thanks. She can buckle a seat belt, but when she buckles her car seat buckles it's hard to tell if they're really in all the way or if they went in most of the way but didn't "click." I definitely need to do it myself. I am just wondering if the rationale for 5 pt harness car seats being safer than boosters at this age would be that the car seats are attached to the car at more points, while the booster is only attached via a seat belt that could fail in an accident?

It has nothing to do with how the seat is attached to the car. It has to do with the idea that five points of connection on the harness spread the forces over her body more evenly, and therefore one spot is less likely to feel the strain (versus a three point seatbelt). Another reason being that at 37 pounds she may be too small for some boosters yet and may submarine underneath the seatbelt, which could cause internal or spinal injuries (there are many boosters rated from 30 pounds, and a good fitting one would be fine to use). And then with a top tether the head excursion is less. That means how far forward her head travels in a collision. So it's less likely to strike the front seats and cause a spinal injury.

The flip of the coin is that with a three point seatbelt the head and upper body is more likely to move forward as one unit, and so relative to her body, her neck would not stretch and bend and stress forward as much. So the idea there is that by letting her be *less* restrained, it's doing her a service. Her head is smaller relative to her body size, and her spine has ossified nearly completely, so the risk of internal decapitation has gone down (it's never zero, but six years old is a big reduction, as is physical adulthood).

There have been no studies done comparing the two over five years and 40 pounds. The five years mark found a break in the head injuries, the 40 pounds found a reduction in kids submarining under the belt. But with a well fitting booster rated for kids under 40 pounds, I wouldn't worry about 37 pounds. My older daughter rode in a booster many times before she finally hit 40 pounds around seven years old.

Wendy