Warning for Rear Facing Car Seats in Ford Explorer

[Unregistered]

We rented a 2014 Ford Explorer from AVIS over Memorial Day Weekend. My 10 month old daughter was in the second row rear-facing in her Diono Radian RXT car seat (sitting on the right side of the SUV). When I pressed the lever to let the left side seats down to put my two year old into his car seat on the third row, the spring-loaded seats landed on her leg, twisting and crushing it. Now she has a broken tibia! There is a serious flaw in the design of these seats. They are VERY heavy and are spring loaded so that they fall very hard when you press the lever. I do not believe they accounted for children sitting in rear facing car seats when they designed this vehicle, it is like a booby trap waiting to happen and it needs to be recalled.

 

[henrietta]

We rented a 2014 Ford Explorer from AVIS over Memorial Day Weekend. My 10 month old daughter was in the second row rear-facing in her Diono Radian RXT car seat (sitting on the right side of the SUV). When I pressed the lever to let the left side seats down to put my two year old into his car seat on the third row, the spring-loaded seats landed on her leg, twisting and crushing it. Now she has a broken tibia! There is a serious flaw in the design of these seats. They are VERY heavy and are spring loaded so that they fall very hard when you press the lever. I do not believe they accounted for children sitting in rear facing car seats when they designed this vehicle, it is like a booby trap waiting to happen and it needs to be recalled.

OMG!! I would have never seen that coming. I'm so sorry that happened to your dd.

ETA: our dd (now 6 months old) got a broken arm (supposedly broken-hard to tell on a 2 month old baby) & dislocated elbow when dh accidentally dropped her back in January. She arched backwards in his arms really quickly, and even though he had one hand under her and one behind her back, he was caught off guard and she fell. We all still see it played over and over again in our minds...we're all traumatized, except her. (-; She healed really, really fast. We were so fortunate she didn't hit her head on the floor. We had a definite angel guiding dh's hands, as he just got his hand behind her head as she came down on the floor.

Hope your dd heals quickly!!!

 

[Keeks64]

Holy crap that's scary I'm so sorry for your DD

Have you contacted ford? I'm not sure who you would contact in the US to report it but please do! That's just dangerous!

 

[murphydog77]

Yikes! This is the type of incident that NHTSA would like to hear about:

https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/ivoq/

 

[MN_Mom]

I'm sorry your daughter was injured. This sounds like it would be a concern for any vehicle with seats that fold forward.

We have a 2014 Explorer but our DD is RF behind the driver so we can tumble forward the passenger side 40-section of the 60/40 split.