Question Rear Facing vs. Front Facing

A friend of mine in Edmonton, Alberta, canada was pulled over at a car seat check today and the police officer praised her for having an 18month old, 2 year old and 3 year old child all front facing. He told her that any child over 22 lbs should be front facing no matter what and that only children under 22 lbs should be rear facing. He also told her that if I child's legs are bent at all while being in a RF car seat that they are too tall and should be flipped right away?? My car seat was purchased specifically because it will allow for RF up to 40lbs and FF up to 65lbs. Is what the officer told her correct? Could I be given a ticket because my 30 month old (25lbs) and my 1 year old (22 lbs) are both rear facing??

Everything that officer said is wrong!!!! Use the seat to it's limits RF before turning it FF.

*smacks forehead* :thumbsdown: NO!!!!

First of all, the officer is SERIOUSLY mistaken that children are safer forward facing. Children are 5 times safer rear facing, far less likely to be injured or killed, and there are SO many studies that can confirm this.

This is one of the very reasons that car seat standards were recently changed to require HIGHER weight minimums for forward facing seats.

You can NOT get a ticket for rear facing your kids after 22 pounds. There is no law that says you have to turn your kids forward facing at any point (unless they have outgrown the limits of the seat).

THANK YOU for keeping your kids rear facing.

Great advice, shows such knowledge It's not surprising parents are confused when the people who really should know in reality have no clue.

I was pulled over too (in Denmark tough) last summer. The police suspected that Mathias - 4 years old wasn´t secured in a carseat as he was consantly stretching his neck to see the police car behind us

But I was highly praised for having him in a rearfacing seat

These seats are not commonplace in DK

VanIsleMommy said:

*smacks forehead* :thumbsdown: NO!!!!

First of all, the officer is SERIOUSLY mistaken that children are safer forward facing. Children are 5 times safer rear facing, far less likely to be injured or killed, and there are SO many studies that can confirm this.

This is one of the very reasons that car seat standards were recently changed to require HIGHER weight minimums for forward facing seats.

You can NOT get a ticket for rear facing your kids after 22 pounds. There is no law that says you have to turn your kids forward facing at any point (unless they have outgrown the limits of the seat).

THANK YOU for keeping your kids rear facing.

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there was a mother recently here in NZ who got a ticket for having her (almost?) 3 year ol still rearfacing..the police officer (from what I recall) thought all babies over 6 months had to be foward facing. but there is no maximum age for RFing long as they fit both the height and weight you can rearface to 100 years of age

Unregistered said:

A friend of mine in Edmonton, Alberta, canada was pulled over at a car seat check today and the police officer praised her for having an 18month old, 2 year old and 3 year old child all front facing. He told her that any child over 22 lbs should be front facing no matter what and that only children under 22 lbs should be rear facing. He also told her that if I child's legs are bent at all while being in a RF car seat that they are too tall and should be flipped right away?? My car seat was purchased specifically because it will allow for RF up to 40lbs and FF up to 65lbs. Is what the officer told her correct? Could I be given a ticket because my 30 month old (25lbs) and my 1 year old (22 lbs) are both rear facing??

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This is not terribly uncommon in my experience. The cheat sheet that police carry (in Alberta, cannot speak for other provinces) list the minimums. Many police officers doing roadside seat checks have very little training under their belts, and are at these checks because they are told to be. Combine little training with cheat sheets still listing the minimums, and it's not all that surprising they get it wrong.

In terms of being ticketed, I guess you could. If a police officer decides to not read your owner's manual, or simply doesn't understand that there is an overlap (RF 5-40, FF 22-65 as an example) and only has the cheat sheet, and has little or no training, and is using his discretion, you could be ticketed. He should offer you information about the Option 4 class, though. This is where you sit through a 30 minute video on CR's and then have your ticket waived. The last time I sat through the video there was a brief mention of ERF, which is kind of funny. Maybe the police officer needs to take the Option 4 class, lol. If you weren't offered the Option 4 class info, you could certainly go to court and fight the ticket.

Anyhoo, basically it's all kind of a mess out there. I used to volunteer at roadside checks, but it was ... not a good use of my time. The reality is that very few, if anyone, knew enough to touch anyone's seat. I saw/heard all kinds of nonsense, and it was just too frustrating.

If I was ticketed I would make a point of fighting it just out of principal. Ignorance is not an acceptable defense if charged with any crime (you can't simply say "oh I didn't know the law"), so likewise, if an officer of the law is mistaken he should be held accountable. Guaranteed he wouldn't make that mistake again.

Oh man. I would so go to town (fighting it, media, anything I could think of) if someone gave me a ticket for keeping my child rear-facing. I'd probably have to really restrain myself from getting a ticket (or arrested?) for something else first though. Verbally assaulting a police officer or some such thing. My blood pressure is going up just thinking about it.

sparkyd said:

Oh man. I would so go to town (fighting it, media, anything I could think of) if someone gave me a ticket for keeping my child rear-facing. I'd probably have to really restrain myself from getting a ticket (or arrested?) for something else first though. Verbally assaulting a police officer or some such thing. My blood pressure is going up just thinking about it.

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I am laughing at the mental picture of you tearing a strip off of an officer trying to ticket you for ERF.

Sent from my iPod touch using Car-Seat.Org

I read this when first posted and I didn't reply b/c it really made me mad. I'm still upset about it though and I've had all day to chill so maybe I'm justified in my anger. I really hope that your friend goes to the police department and the media about this. (Perhaps she doesn't think it's an issue though as her 18 month old isn't RF?) That advice is not just wrong, it is dangerous. How many parents have been told this and not thought anything of it and just flipped their child FF before they need to. This is really upsetting. :thumbsdown:


ETA: If you need logic for your friend or the officer (beyond physics and safety)...If it were illegal to FF after 22 pounds why on earth would we have seats available that RF to 45 pounds?

I agree.... if someone hears something from 20 other moms, reads it somewhere online, or even has a car seat tech say one thing, but a police officer tells her another thing and that she can be FINED on top of that, she's pretty likely to not only trust the police officer's advice, but will tell all her friends and family etc that this is the way it should be. very dangerous advice indeed.

I'm a technician instructor-trainer in Edmonton and I've been involved in the community pretty much since I was certified.

I can tell you a few things:

• Ultimately, it's up to the police officer whether he issues a ticket or not.
• Having a child rf'ing in a seat that is used properly and that the child fits properly is not "technical" grounds for a ticket.
• There is no minimum or maximum amount for rf'ing a child in Alberta - we have only proper use requirements.
• Most police officers are not trained technicians. There are a few out there - I've personally certified a few peace officers who do roadside checks in Strathcona County - but they would not ticket a parent for having an 18 month old rf'ing nor would they be commenting on a parent doing the right thing by having all her kids ff'ing.
• It's unlikely that a police officer would make that type of comment at a roadside stop unless your friend brought up something about rf'ing. (Would she have done that? Is there any back story here that would lead to this story?)
• Injury prevention nurses at health units in the Capital Health region have all received updates that it is best to keep children rf'ing as long as they fit the seat that they're in. They have been given information about higher limit rf'ing seats even. This information is supposed to have been spread down to all health nurses as I understand it - I suspect there are varying levels of success depending on which unit you're at.
• Alberta Occupant Restraint Program encourages rf'ing beyond the minimums as well.

Road side checks in Edmonton are staffed by injury prevention nurses. The police officers are the ones who give tickets, but the injury prevention nurses are the ones who tell the officers what things they could potentially choose to ticket for in any given vehicle. If it was a routine traffic stop, probability has it that the officer wasn't certified. I know that Edmonton West division does have a hand full of technicians in the traffic safety department, but I think they're often involved more in prevention and community relations than actual enforcement. (don't quote me on that one though, I've never specifically asked them their full job descriptions, lol.)

I tell all the parents I help that I am more than willing to go to court with them and fight a ticket that was issued unjustly. I believe that parents who are ticketed unjustly should fight their tickets in the hopes that the officer who ticketed the parent would then be educated and not ticket somebody in the future for doing something which is keeping their child safer.

Imagine if an officer said "turn that 18 month old child ff'ing, here's your ticket" so you turned your child around to ff'ing and then you went around the block, got in a head-on collision, and then your child suffered a catastrophic neck injury and was paralyzed or worse. It's just craziness that a police officer could be making those kinds of inaccurate comments and education is important to prevent a child from getting unnecessarily injured.

So yes - I'm a believer that tickets issued erroneously for child restraints should be fought and I will support a parent provided it's something I can vouch for. If someone did get a ticket for rf'ing their kid, I'd suggest getting to a health unit same day or next and getting a height and weight recorded of the child just for the purposes of proving your child fit the seat still. However, I think it highly unlikely that this would happen.