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Parents place children at risk by putting them in the wrong car seats
Fri, 03 Feb 2012

Around one-in-seven parents are putting their children at risk by placing them in forward-facing car seats too early, according to a new report.

The car sale website Motors.co.uk conducted a study of 1,000 parents in the UK and found that 70 per cent of them were unwittingly placing their children at risk by prematurely using forward-facing car seats. However, 52 per cent of parents said they would purchase a rear-facing car seat if they were more widely available in the UK.

In the UK, Group 0 and 0+ seats for babies up to the age of 18 months or 13 kg in weight are rear-facing, while most of the larger seats for sale are forward-facing. Many large retailers do not stock rear-facing seats for older children which means parents have to seek out specialist sites or buy them from abroad.

Ministers and manufacturers are being called on to make Group 1 rear-facing child seats more readily available for older children.

Road safety minister Mike Penning said: "We recognise that a properly fitted rear-facing child seat is likely to offer better protection in a frontal impact crash than a forward-facing seat. We are currently working at an international level to agree revised standards for child car seats."
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