A
Aaron
Guest
Hi - I'm a visitor here. My wife and I have found this site to be incredibly useful.
We are on the hunt for a family-sized car to replace our Civic for our expanding family (4-year-old, with another due in a couple months).
We were considering a 2012 Toyota Camry Hybrid, but the fixed (and rather cushy) headrests for the outboard seats in the back seem to pose a challenge to securing either our Britax Frontier or Britax Roundabout using the tether. (Britax recommends using the tether in conjunction with the LATCH system.) In our 2008 Accord, we simply removed the headrests so that our Britaxes' tethers have an unobstructed path to the shelf anchors. That's impossible to do in the 2012 Camry.
I fitted the Frontier's tether in a 2012 Camry this past weekend. As many of you know, the tether straps extend from the back top of the Frontier in a triangular or arrowhead fashion, converging at the shelf anchor point. In the Camry, the triangular-shaped tether must either go over the headrests, thus compressing them downward, or around the headrests, with one strap on the left side of the headrest and one strap on the right side of the headrest. This latter approach resulted in compressing the headrest inward.
My initial impressions were: At the least, the headrest may look malformed after a few years of being pinched beneath or between the straps. At worst, it seems to me that the stability of the whole car seat is compromised by the straps' obstructed path to the anchor point. That is, the force of a collision *might* cause the straps to slip from their position around the headrest or to further compress the headrest down, thus causing there to be a couple more inches of extra strap that would allow the car seat to move more than it should (i.e. tip forward). If the head rests were less spongy, I might feel different.
I'm interested to hear from those of you who own a 2012 Camry and a similar car seat, or who have also tried fitting similar car seats in that car. If you own a 2012 Camry, do you feel comfortable that the car seats will remain firmly in place? If you've tried fitting a Britax convertible car seat in a 2012 Camry, what were your impressions?
Maybe, objectively, this is a non-issue. If you have real-world experience, please share it.
Thanks.
We are on the hunt for a family-sized car to replace our Civic for our expanding family (4-year-old, with another due in a couple months).
We were considering a 2012 Toyota Camry Hybrid, but the fixed (and rather cushy) headrests for the outboard seats in the back seem to pose a challenge to securing either our Britax Frontier or Britax Roundabout using the tether. (Britax recommends using the tether in conjunction with the LATCH system.) In our 2008 Accord, we simply removed the headrests so that our Britaxes' tethers have an unobstructed path to the shelf anchors. That's impossible to do in the 2012 Camry.
I fitted the Frontier's tether in a 2012 Camry this past weekend. As many of you know, the tether straps extend from the back top of the Frontier in a triangular or arrowhead fashion, converging at the shelf anchor point. In the Camry, the triangular-shaped tether must either go over the headrests, thus compressing them downward, or around the headrests, with one strap on the left side of the headrest and one strap on the right side of the headrest. This latter approach resulted in compressing the headrest inward.
My initial impressions were: At the least, the headrest may look malformed after a few years of being pinched beneath or between the straps. At worst, it seems to me that the stability of the whole car seat is compromised by the straps' obstructed path to the anchor point. That is, the force of a collision *might* cause the straps to slip from their position around the headrest or to further compress the headrest down, thus causing there to be a couple more inches of extra strap that would allow the car seat to move more than it should (i.e. tip forward). If the head rests were less spongy, I might feel different.
I'm interested to hear from those of you who own a 2012 Camry and a similar car seat, or who have also tried fitting similar car seats in that car. If you own a 2012 Camry, do you feel comfortable that the car seats will remain firmly in place? If you've tried fitting a Britax convertible car seat in a 2012 Camry, what were your impressions?
Maybe, objectively, this is a non-issue. If you have real-world experience, please share it.
Thanks.
