Anonymous wrote:For those of you who are comparing allowing a 7 or 8 year old to sit in a car seat (in the back) without a booster to being an anti-vaxxer, I challenge you to find any data that supports your position. The only real studies they have on this indicate that for children age 6 and up, seat belts prevent fatalities just as well as booster seats.

http://dmarkanderson.com/Booster_Seats_and_Traffic_Fatalities_7_28_17.pdf

"For children ages
2 through 9, our results generally suggest that booster seats are no more effective at decreasing
the probability of fatality than are child safety seats or standard seat belts."

This is not only untrue but discounts the risk of major abdominal trauma (that is not always fatal) from seatbelts that do not yet fit correctly.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749379717301745
https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/wk/bpo/2018/00000038/00000007/art00010

yes, 13 is the rule in our family. 5'4'' 12 year old rides buckled in back.

For those of you who are comparing allowing a 7 or 8 year old to sit in a car seat (in the back) without a booster to being an anti-vaxxer, I challenge you to find any data that supports your position. The only real studies they have on this indicate that for children age 6 and up, seat belts prevent fatalities just as well as booster seats.

http://dmarkanderson.com/Booster_Seats_and_Traffic_Fatalities_7_28_17.pdf

"For children ages
2 through 9, our results generally suggest that booster seats are no more effective at decreasing
the probability of fatality than are child safety seats or standard seat belts."

We're all safer in the back seat than the front. Children, moreso, due to both height and also bone maturity.

PP, it isn't as much about maturity related to sitting correctly, though that's important as well. It is about bone development and ossification. Physiological maturity.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Front seat from 8 is fine as long as you can disable the air bag.

So they can slam into the dashboard full speed or potentiall go flying through the windshield or have the windshield crash in on them?

Why are state laws so lenient about front seats? In California, kids have to be 8. I think other states are the same. Sure, there are recommendations from pediatricians and other groups recommending 12, but those are just recommendations. The law is actually quite loose.

They are recommendations not laws because there are circumstances in which transporting children in the front cannot be avoided. There are many families in this country that transport more children than the number of rear seating positions. IT is a financial reality that not everyone can afford to buy a larger vehicle.

And for those saying it is about height/weight and not age, it is actually about maturity. It is about being able to sit properly for the entire ride without getting in front of an airbag at an inopportune time.

Anonymous wrote:I feel like when answering this question, people should have had to include when they flipped car seats. The rear facing 4 year old most likely became the 5’5” backseat 13 year old.

Flipped the car seat at 18 months, DS legs were hitting the seat and he needed to be swapped early. He is still in a booster and will stay in the back seat until his is a teenager. You do what is right for the kid and not what might be nicer, more convenient or reduce whining for you.

I try not to make generalization about parents who allow their kids in the front seat when they are younger, how about you return the favor? You can make that choice, I might disagree with it but it is your choice to make.

Anonymous wrote:I feel like when answering this question, people should have had to include when they flipped car seats. The rear facing 4 year old most likely became the 5’5” backseat 13 year old.

My oldest son is 9, 4'7", 70ish pounds, and still sits in a booster. We flipped him at a year - extended rear facing had *just* become a thing. He won't be sitting in the front anytime soon. I don't know anyone who let's the 8-9-10 year olds sit in the front seat.

I feel like when answering this question, people should have had to include when they flipped car seats. The rear facing 4 year old most likely became the 5’5” backseat 13 year old.

Everyone in my circle had kids in the front by age 10. I am in the Midwest now.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am 35 and I wasn’t allowed to sit in the front until the age of 12. This is not a new rule.

I wonder when it started?
I am 43 and remember riding in the front seat as young as 4 years old.

I'm 35 and come from a family of 4 kids. I remember sitting in the front in the "bucket seat" between my parents because I was the smallest. So it definitely wasn't a "rule" in the 80s!!

I remember sleeping bags laid out in the back of the station wagon so we could sleep when we got an early start on a trip and then sitting in that same space and playing. Or the rear facing back seat in the trunk area. My Mom remembers being annoyed when she had to buy a baby seat for me because it had just been mandated, my two older brothers were just held in the front seat. And my parents were considered strict because you had to wear your seat belt in the car.

There are times when O wonder how the heck so many of us survived, I know it is because the really bad accidents and the like are rare events today and were rare events then, but it seems like some common sense ideas were regularly ignored.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am 35 and I wasn’t allowed to sit in the front until the age of 12. This is not a new rule.

I wonder when it started?
I am 43 and remember riding in the front seat as young as 4 years old.

I'm 35 and come from a family of 4 kids. I remember sitting in the front in the "bucket seat" between my parents because I was the smallest. So it definitely wasn't a "rule" in the 80s!!

I’m 34 and my mom was a stickler for keeping kids in the back seat until they were at least 13. She would even tell all her friends that it was safer for kids to be in the back seat, which I found embarrassing at the time, but now that I’m a parent, I think, good for her for standing up for kids. It’s not their fault their parents didn’t know any better. Maybe she even saved a kid’s life, who knows?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Front seat from 8 is fine as long as you can disable the air bag.

So they can slam into the dashboard full speed or potentiall go flying through the windshield or have the windshield crash in on them?

Why are state laws so lenient about front seats? In California, kids have to be 8. I think other states are the same. Sure, there are recommendations from pediatricians and other groups recommending 12, but those are just recommendations. The law is actually quite loose.

My 13 DD is 5'7" (an inch taller than me) and still sitting at the back

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am 35 and I wasn’t allowed to sit in the front until the age of 12. This is not a new rule.

I wonder when it started?
I am 43 and remember riding in the front seat as young as 4 years old.

I'm 35 and come from a family of 4 kids. I remember sitting in the front in the "bucket seat" between my parents because I was the smallest. So it definitely wasn't a "rule" in the 80s!!

Why are we even debating this. Unfortunately dumb dumbs will do what they do.