Extended Rear Facing

The minimum age that a child's car seat is supposed to be changed from rear facing to front facing is one year and twenty pounds.  However, rear facing past that point is still safer.  Just think about this for a moment...

When a child is in a forward-facing seat, [in an accident] there is tremendous stress put on the child's neck, which must hold the large head back. The mass of the head of a small child is about 25% of the body mass whereas the mass of the adult head is only 6%!  A small child's neck sustains massive amounts of force in a crash.  The body is held back by the straps while the head is thrown forward - stressing, stretching or even breaking the spinal cord.  The child's head is at greater risk in a forward-facing seat as well.  In a crash, the head is thrown outside the confines of the seat and can make dangerous contact with other occupants, vehicle structures, and even intruding objects, like trees or other vehicles.

Rear-facing seats do a phenomenal job of protecting children because there is little or no force applied to the head, neck and spine.  When a child is in a rear-facing seat, the head, neck and spine are all kept fully aligned and the child is allowed to "ride down" the crash while the back of the child restraint absorbs the bulk of the crash force. The head is contained within the restraint, and the child is much less likely to come into contact with anything that might cause head injury.-" (source)(emphasis added)

Nathan's current seat

It is safer not to turn your child's carseat forward facing until you reach the rear facing weight limit on the carseat itself, which on a convertible carseat is usually around 30 pounds.

Both of ours, The First Years True Fit and the Cosco Scenera, go to 35 pounds rear facing, so both Nathan (29 months) and Miriam (16 months) are rear facing.  There are even some carseats, such as the Graco My Ride 65 Car Seat, Safety 1st Complete Air that can rear face until 40 pounds, and the Sunshine Kids Radian80SL goes to 45 pounds rear facing.

Some people think that you have to turn them around when their feet touch the back of the seat, but that isn't true.  We've found that Nathan is quite comfortable crossing his legs. Occasionally  the objection is made that a child might be at increased risk of broken legs if rear facing.  I am ok with that, if true, because in the event of a severe accident in which my child was likely to suffer an injury of that magnitude rear facing he would be at higher risk forward facing.   There's a little saying that goes "Broken leg? Cast it.  Broken neck?  Casket." 

 Basically, the longer a child can ride rear-facing, the better protected his or her spinal cord is in the event of a collision.  - Joe Colella, Former Child Passenger Safety Training Manager for the National SAFE KIDS Campaign

"The most common misunderstanding is that a child is ready to travel facing forward when his neck muscles are strong enough to support and control his head. However, when a car hits something at 25 to 30 mph, it will come to a stop at a negative acceleration rate of from 20 to 30 G. Because of the time lag between when the vehicle stops and an occupant stops, and the fact that the head of a forward-facing adult or child is still free to move relative to the restrained torso, the head may experience as much as 60 or 70 Gs acceleration for a brief moment. Even the strong neck muscles of military volunteers cannot counteract such forces. Instead, the rigidity of the bones in the neck and strength of the connecting ligaments (not the muscles) hold the adult spine together and keep the spinal cord intact within the confines of the vertebral column.

Very young children, however, have immature vertebrae that are still partly made of cartilage. These are soft and will deform and/or separate under tension, leaving just the spinal cord as the last link between the head and the torso. According to documented research, autopsy specimens of infant spines and ligaments allow for spinal column elongation of up to two inches, but the spinal cord ruptures if stretched more than 1/4 inch. Real-world experience has shown that a young child's skull can be literally ripped from her spine by the force of a crash."- from Carseat.org, here

And just one more quote, this one from a post on the subject:

 "toddlers between the ages of 12 & 23 months who ride rear facing are 5 times safer and 75% less likely to experience serious injury or die than their forward-facing peers."

I'm not a safety expert, a car seat technician, or a crash test expert.  I'm 'just' a mama.  I know that I can't protect my children from all harm, but considering that motor vehicle injuries are the leading cause of death among children in the U.S it is definitely worth a little bit of thought and research to consider how we can best keep our children safe while traveling.  Because it doesn't matter how safe a driver you are - you cannot control other drivers and you cannot predict whether a drunk driver is going to come flying through red light at a seemingly empty intersection.  You can only take steps to keep your child as safe as you can.  Keeping your little one rear facing is an easy way to make them safer. 

We haven't found rear facing past a year to be inconvenient or a hassle at all... it's a really simple way of making our kids a little safer in the car! 

 

Are your little ones rear facing still?  

Did you know that it was still safer, even past the age of one? 

What are some good safety resources you've found?

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Update: As of April 2011 "the American Academy of Pediatrics now advises parents to keep toddlers in rear-facing car seats until age 2, or until they exceed the height or weight limit for the car seat, which can be found on the back of the seat.  Previously, the AAP advised parents to keep kids rear-facing as long as possible, up to the maximum limit of the car seat, and this has not changed.  But it also cited one year and 20 pounds as the minimum for flipping the seat, which many parents and pediatricians interpreted as conventional wisdom on the best time to make the switch.  The new policy clarifies the AAP's recommendation, making age 2 the new guideline -- a real game-changer for parents of toddlers.

A 2007 study in the journal Injury Prevention found that children under age 2 are 75 percent less likely to die or to be severely injured in a crash if they are rear-facing. Another study found riding rear-facing to be five times safer than forward-facing." -CNN, AAP: Toddlers in rear-facing seat until 2

We are still rear facing two carseats, with an almost 3 and almost 2 year old.  Nathan is getting very close to the weight limit, so he will probably need to forward face soon after 3, however.