Correct placement of 2 carseats for minivan.

Mom0f2 · Jul 20, 2007

I've been reading through the posts- and wanted to make sure this was correct.
I have a '06 Sienna with two middle row bucket seats. Only passenger side bucket seat can be moved to the middle. My son will be 2 and forward facing (evenflo triumph) by the time I install my infant rear facing (graco) carseat.
FF toddler stays in the middle bucket seat 2nd row- and infant behind the driver? Is that the safest placement for my children?
How safe is the third row of a minivan?

SarahP · Jul 29, 2007

Hopefully one of the techs will come along and comment on the rest of your post but . . .
I believe that the center of the second row is the safest position in the van and so should go to the RF infant as he/she would be the smallest and most vulnerable.

Mom0f2 said:
I've been reading through the posts- and wanted to make sure this was correct.
I have a '06 Sienna with two middle row bucket seats. Only passenger side bucket seat can be moved to the middle. My son will be 2 and forward facing (evenflo triumph) by the time I install my infant rear facing (graco) carseat.
FF toddler stays in the middle bucket seat 2nd row- and infant behind the driver? Is that the safest placement for my children?
How safe is the third row of a minivan?

jen_nah · Jul 30, 2007

SarahP said:
Hopefully one of the techs will come along and comment on the rest of your post but . . .
I believe that the center of the second row is the safest position in the van and so should go to the RF infant as he/she would be the smallest and most vulnerable.

That is the big debate on here. While the infant is more fragile but the ff'ing child is the more vulnerable of substaning injuries.

I have always been taught the least protected in the center.

Least to most protected would be
seatbelt only passenger
booster seat passenger
ff'ing carseat passenger
rf'ing passenger

My question to the OP is what is your oldest child's weight? We on here strongly urge you to keep your oldest rear facing to the full weight limit of his Truimph or 1" of seat shell above his head. At 2yrs old he should still be within both of those limits so he would be safest to remain rear facing until he reaches either 1 of those limits.

If you have both rear facing then I would put newborn in the center and oldest outboard.

But, If the oldest is ff'ing then he needs to be in the center & newborn outboard.

AdventureMom · Jul 30, 2007

jen_nah said:
My question to the OP is what is your oldest child's weight? We on here strongly urge you to keep your oldest rear facing to the full weight limit of his Truimph or 1" of seat shell above his head. At 2yrs old he should still be within both of those limits so he would be safest to remain rear facing until he reaches either 1 of those limits.

If you have both rear facing then I would put newborn in the center and oldest outboard.

But, If the oldest is ff'ing then he needs to be in the center & newborn outboard.

I agree. Here's some info about ERF:

- http://www.cpsafety.com/articles/StayRearFacing.aspx

- here's crashtest photos of a child FF and RF from the above link:

- recently, there are a crash in New Zealand where a 2 y.o. little girl suffered severe neck injuries. The judge actually commented that she would've fared much better if she had been rear-facing (the seats there don't allow rear-facing to higher weights like they do here)

We turned our son FF at 11 months old, I believe. Knowing what I know now as a tech and after hanging out on this board, I will keep any future children RF to the limit of the seat. Your child not "unsafe" FF but would be much safer RF.

CRS · Aug 17, 2007

AdventureMom said:
- recently, there are a crash in New Zealand where a 2 y.o. little girl suffered severe neck injuries. The judge actually commented that she would've fared much better if she had been rear-facing (the seats there don't allow rear-facing to higher weights like they do here)

Just a teeny tiny correction... It was the doctors at the hospital that commented that the injuries most likely would have been prevented had she been rear-facing, not the judge

Story here http://www.stuff.co.nz/4144421a10.html