AdventureDad, can you point me to some sources? It really surprises me that you say that RFing in the front seat (no airbag) is safer than RFing in the back seat. Every study I've seen says that back seat is significantly safer than front seat.
Adventure Dad referenced some of his sources on another forum not too long ago, and I'd invite him to do it again because I'd be most happy to translate the Swedish into English and explain it for everyone here on cs.org.
To sum it up in English, a number of car seat manufacturers recommend front seat because of the hard surface of the dash making it a superior bracing surface. This makes sense as the higher weight rf'ing seats that are used in Sweden are going to have more forces placed on the seat during rotation and be at higher risk of over rotation without a firm bracing surface behind the seat. These circumstances don't apply to north American seats which have to pass rf'ing standards with nothing being braced behind them.
Swedish collision percents are also different than North American. Side impacts and rollovers are rare events in Sweden. Some of the "top safety institutes" etc. quoted have a dialog about front seat being equal in certain types of collisions and less safe in others. In fact there wasn't one link that was posted that upon translating said that front seat was safer. There were car seat manufacturers advising front seat for the benefit of bracing on the dash, and there was some discussion that using the front seat would likely extend the length of time a parent kept a child rf'ing - which in return would increase the safety of the child. Rf'ing in the front seat with no airbag is going to be safer than ff'ing in the backseat in most collisions... So that argument could be interpreted as front seat being safer - but it's really a very around the bush interpretation that isn't completely accurate.
Without pulling up the whole list of the post from the other forum, I can really only sum it up to say that some of the "front seat is just as safe or safer" being repeated over and over is convenient selection from a number of sources that give other information as well. Their own statistics don't show that front seat is safer - but car seat manufacturers prefer front seat with the higher rf'ing weight limits when no air bag is present because of the dash board as a bracing surface. All this really tells me is that it's probably not a good idea to use a Swedish seat in a north american vehicle if it can't be braced. :twocents:
(I'd link to my post, but it was deleted due to an edit made in a prior post which I had quoted, and I never found time to re-word my post. But this is the reason why I'm inviting AD to take the time to post all of the Swedish information again. Because I'm more than happy to take on the translation and explanation again. :thumbsup: )
What I can tell you is that North American seats perform perfectly fine when not braced, and that North American crash statistics indicate that the back seat is safest.
That being said, when the only option is the front seat and there's no airbag, it's ok to place a rf'ing seat in front. I would be sure to make sure the seat has EPS or EPP foam though, and wouldn't want to use the vehicle regularly - my primary concern being that since it's an older car the crumple zone in the car won't be as good as modern vehicles and there could be a significant reduction in how much energy the crumple zone actually absorbed meaning that there could be higher risk of injury even at lower speeds.