rf children and feet touching seat

Jan06twinmom

New member
I was at a breastfeeding awareness walk this morning and there were some CHP officers talking about car seats. I started talking with the officer about extended rear-facing. He knew about children rf until 4 or 5 in Sweden and why rear-facing is so much better.

However, he said that you can keep children rf until their feet are touching the back seat and then you have to turn them. :eek: Everything I've read says that having feet touching the seat is not a safety concern - and that should not be a reason for moving a child from rf to ff. I thought I saw research that shows children are more likely to break their legs in an accident if they are ff than rf anyway.

So does anyone know some links that talk about the feet touching the seat and why it's not a concern?

What does the safekids tech curriculum say about feet touching the seat with rear-facing children?

I'm going to contact our local safekids coordinator to talk to her about this. We live in a smaller city and so I'm guessing that the majority of techs in our area will work with her to get or maintain their certification.

Thanks for any help!
 
ADS

NannyMom

Well-known member
I think I would have replied.... "Isn't a broken leg better then a broken neck?"

Of course having more info to tell him would be better than that response. But I've found that when armed with nothing else, that helps.
 

skaterbabs

Well-known member
:( That's totally incorrect. The legs touching the seatback is NOT a safety issue at all. If you have his name I'd suggest contacting the head of your local SK coalition and requesting he be retrained.
 

Shaunam

New member
Absolutely not true. My DD's feet hit the back when she was 7 months and she is NOT tall for her age, she has a long torso/short legs, and her knees are bent more than normal because of her CP. I imagine most babies start touching the back WELL before a year.

And like one pp said, better a broken leg than a broken neck.
 

emars002

New member
Absolutely not true. My DD's feet hit the back when she was 7 months and she is NOT tall for her age, she has a long torso/short legs, and her knees are bent more than normal because of her CP. I imagine most babies start touching the back WELL before a year.

And like one pp said, better a broken leg than a broken neck.

:yeahthat: i wonder if he has thought about it much b/c most kids wouldn't even make it to 1 and 20lbs which is the minimum if that were the case - my kids feet were touching when they were still in buckets so somewhere before 9 months or so.
 

fyrfightermomma

New member
I'm confused though...you said he knew about children in Sweden RFing to 4-5 years old and that he knows how much better it is.

So why would he think you would have to turn when the feet touch which is usually before a year old??

How does he think they RF to 4 or 5 if they can't have feet touching...I'm very confused! :confused:
 

wendytthomas

Admin - CPST Instructor
Staff member
In Sweden they have added leg room, so their feet bend and go down, just like ours do FFing. They very rarely have their feet smooshed against the backseat.

But yeah, if he'd applied about three more neurons before he opened his mouth he would have realized how ridiculous he was being.

Wendy
 

Heather98012

New member
LOL....I was gonna say, my sis lived in Sweden & I don't recall it being a land of incredibly short people. How he thought they could RF until 4-5 & not have feet touching the seat was confusing me too!
 

Qarin

New member
I think I've mentioned this before, but when I took a First Responder medic course like 15 years ago, one of the things they stressed in the car safety portion, along with the risk of internal injuries from putting the shoulder belt under your arm, was that passengers putting their feet up on the dashboard was the cause of many femur fractures and you should *never ever do that*. I strongly suspect that it is this training which leads safety professionals (like police officers) to conclude that a rear-facing child having his feet up on the seatback in front of him is very dangerous.

Of course, it's not exactly true- for a forward-facing front-seat passenger, there is a risk in a frontal collision; for a rearfacing rear-seat passenger, IF there is a risk, it is in rear collisions. Frontal collisions are (in general) much more violent and fast than rear collisions, increasing that leg fracture risk for a front-seat passenger in a typical frontal collision, vs the risk of leg fracture for that rear-facing rear-seat passenger in a typical rear collision. Along with that, the interplay between a rear-facing car seat with 5pt (or 3pt, but both shoulders), its passenger, and the seat back of the back seat is, it seems to me, pretty significantly different from the interplay between an adult sitting in a lap and shoulder belt with legs up on the dashboard (especially now, with passenger side airbags! Those were not even mention as an issue Way Back When in my class).

Anyway, I think that's where this common misconception may come from- I'd be interested to know if I'm at all right.
 

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