Keep children in rear facing car seats up to the age of four, parents warned

Some parents see using a forward facing car seat for their baby as soon as possible  as some kind of badge of honour.

But now a campaign has been launched to inform parents that rear facing car seats are safer for children up to four years of age.

In Scandinavia and the USA, rear facing car seats for under fours are the legal guidelines.

But in the UK, more than 70 per cent of parents are not aware that rear facing car seats for children are available.

Website Motors.co.uk, is working with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) and BeSafe, to inform parents about the benefits of such seats and not to be in such a rush to forward face.

They are also hoping to persuade the Department of Transport to examine the law regarding such seats.

Head of Road Safety at RoSPA, Kevin Clinton says RoSPA say it is safer to transport children rear facing for as long as possible. He said: “Research has shown that a forward-facing seat increases safety by 50 per cent, while in a rearward facing seat, safety is increased by 90-95 per cent. Compared with an adult, a baby’s head is four times as heavy in relation to the rest of the body, and their necks are not sufficiently developed to hold its head up, protection that a rear-facing car seat provides more potently.”