Why Don't Axkid Make Forward Facing Car Seats?
Posted by Margaret Bolt on
The short answer is simply:
Because rear facing is safer
The slightly longer version is:
It is safer for children to rear face for as long as possible. Forward facing car seats subject a young child’s neck to unacceptably high loads in a crash, which can result in very serious injuries. Most of these injuries are avoided simply by using rear facing car seats.
There are car seats available that rear face up to 18kg or 105cm (approximately four years) that can also face forward up to the same limits, from either 9kg or 15 months. And there are quite a few car seats that are rear facing only up to 25kg or 125cm (around six to seven years). So if rear facing up to seven years is the safest thing to do, why would anyone need a car seat that can also face forward, but only up to the age of four? Which means you’d potentially turn it forward at around two or three years… It doesn’t make any sense and is pointless.
Some people ask for a seat that can also face forward ‘in case the child doesn’t like rear facing when they’re older’. A lot of adults who have not come across rear facing before anticipate problems when their child gets older. The only reason for that is that as adults we cannot imagine sitting rear facing in the car ourselves. We assume that it must be uncomfortable, and that as soon as a child is old enough to realise that they're facing backwards, they will want to turn around. It's important to know that children and adults experience things very differently and that what may look uncomfortable to us, is not an issue for a child. It usually doesn't even occur to children that there is anything unusual about the way they're sitting in the car and by the time they're old enough to notice, they are also old enough to have the reason explained to them. Children who have always rear faced won’t suddenly decide they don’t like it anymore. And even if they do, it’s not up to a young child to make that decision.
Apart from Axkid, all car seat manufactures still make forward facing car seats, ‘to give parents a choice’. Axkid have made the decision to take that choice away.
BECAUSE REAR FACING IS SAFER.
I wholeheartedly agree with Axkid and believe that nobody should have the option to buy anything other than the safest car seat possible. And that is a rear facing seat up to 25kg/125cm.
These pictures show…
A five year-old in an Axkid One
A one year-old in an Axkid Modukid
A one year-old in an Axkid Modukid
A five year-old in an Axkid Move
A two year-old in an Axkid Minikid
