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One of the greatest thing about living in our country is that we have fairly robust govermental regulations and safety standards when it comes to things like automobile and car seat manufacturers.  We’re not saying we couldn’t be doing better, but we could surely be doing a whole lot worse.  

Safety Sells

Couple these standards with the automobile and car seat manufactures, who know that safety sells these days, means that we are living in a time when we’ve managed to make the incredible act of a human moving 60 miles per hour faster than they we’re ever intended to, ralatively safe.  Significantly safer than even 10 years ago!  So luckily for us, automible travel in general as well as car seats are oinly goling to continue to evolve and get safer and safer. 

First Things First

Ready for another truth bomb?  The back seat is the safest place in the car.  BOOM.  Not even worth debating, much like rear-facign versus forward-facing.  Actually, if you can drive from the back seat of your car, you should.  Seriously.  We, as CPSTs, want your children in the back seat.  Forever.  Seriously.  Ok, we realize that’s probably not ultra-realistic these days, but please keep your kids in the back seat until they’re at least 13 years old.  The one other no-no we need to talk about is using a rear facing car seat in front of an active airbag.  There are several universally accepted no-nos in our world today:  don’t wear white after Labor Day, don’t order a ribeye well done, don’t eat yellow snow.  These pale in comparision to this directive:  Please, Please, Please, for the love of all that is holy in the word, DO NOT EVER put a rear faciing car seat in front of an active air bag.  We hope we were clear on this on.  Really, really bad things happen, seriously.  

Now, as with most things in life, sometimes we have to make exceptions to most rules to solve specific situations.  There may be a time when you have no other option other than to put a child in the front seat of your car.  Maybe because you have a sedan that seats five and you have four children or your only vehicle is a single cab pickup truck, scenarios pop up when sometime placing a child in the front seat is simply unavoidable.  In instances like these we are often able to put a child in the front seat safely.  If you ever run into any of these situations please contact us and set up an appointment and we will help you figure out how to make everyone as safe as possible.  It’s what we’re trained to do.   

Let’s Get Down To Brass Tacks

Statistics tell us that the safest position in nay car is the rear middle seat.  According to one study published in the AAPs journal, Pediatriacs, the rear center seating position is up to 43% safer, than either ouboard seating position, for children agen 0-3 years of age.  

So since we as CPSTs always recommend best practice, the absolutly gold standard of safety, we will usually start by recommending the center seating position for a single child.  However, just because the center seat may be safer that doesn’t make the outboard seating positions unsafe, just less safe.  So, while we would love to have your child in the center seating position it’s ultimately your decision.  If you decide that an outboard seating postion works better for you that perfectly OK and we’ll be delighted to help you make that happen.

Let’s look at some of the pros and cons of each rear seating position.