Re: Fed. Law keeps Volvo from offering safer child seats
I'm just highlighting the points that I make when speaking with local parents....
fact that the front seat of a vehicle is closer to the most common and severe types of impacts.
it's impossible to make the front seat farther away from a frontal crash than the rear seat.
If advocated in the USA [RF in the front passenger seat] would certainly result in many unnecessary deaths of infants because parents will not properly install/brace/use the seat or disable the airbag in their pickups and SUVs from the late 90s and early 2000s
Also, even when disabled, airbags can deploy in rare instances.
Consistency of message
As techs we're taught to tell parents that the oldest harnessed child should sit up front if all the rear seats are filled. I, however, deal mostly with older vehicles that do not have a passenger airbag, so I teach families to put the oldest RF child up front in those vehicles (when the other carseats fit correctly in the rear: more often than not, unfortunately, the oldest boostered kid ends up in the front instead due to limited space & lap only belts in the back).
One thing I'd like to correct is the myth that just because a RF seat is up front this somehow makes the front safer than the rear. No. Sorry, no. Faulty logic. The rear is
ALWAYS safer than the front.
Our curriculum teaches us that the rear seat is about 40% safer, but research at the University in Buffalo shows that the rear is up to 86% safer! Either way, it doesn't matter, RF in the rear is absolutely safer than RF in the front.
What I think, perhaps, Adventuredad might have meant is that RF up front without an airbag is safer than FF up front. Sure, absolutely, without a doubt. However, throw in the deactivated airbag that could (& sometimes does) deploy anyway & then FF would be safer up front than RF. Regardless, both RF & FF are saf
est in the rear.
Here's my own list of safest to least safe, assuming the vehicle is full, plus assuming correct use as per the manuals & for preschoolish toddlers, not infantile toddlers (I've done this before, but can't find that post) . . .
- RF rear center
- RF rear outboard
- RF front passenger without any airbag*
- FF rear center, top tethered
- FF rear center, untethered ~and/or~ FF rear outboard, top tethered
- FF rear outboard, untethered
- FF front passenger with deactivated airbag & vehicle seat slid all the way back (hopefully top tethered if possible)
- RF front passenger with deactivated (bracing or not isn't something I'm willing to argue over since this is the last resort option)
* good luck trying to get NHTSA to approve your request for a dealership to uninstall a front airbag
The airbag in my brother's old truck, which is deactivated with the key, has deployed while deactivated. The front airbag in my old van, deactivated with a weight sensor (supposedly anyone less than 50#) was constantly deactivating itself with me. I weigh twice the amount that should have kept it on & I do not wiggle in my seat.
The moral of the story is simply that we should not consider puting any child in the front unless there is no other possible solution, especially the child most at risk of injury from the airbag: RF. (My solutions are usually to either stay home, leave at least 1 child with someone else, call a friend or call a taxi.)
P.S. consistency of message is important for the parents, but also for the child who is not likely to understand the dynamics of equally distributing the risks amongst the various family members. Safest placement depends on various factors. Making blanket statements that RF in front is safer than FF up front just shouldn't be made. Kids don't belong up front, period. We only resort to that when there's no other way around it. Because even the Swedish pros know that the center of the vehicle is the furthest point from impact. As the saying goes, "the laws of physics don't care what city/state/country you're in"
