Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Swedish Car Seats: Continued

After posting about Swedish carseats yesterday, I came across this discussion from the NYtimes that happened pretty much the same time - with many people voicing their opinions very loudly about how terrible and unpractical it is to impose the new two year rearfacing carseat philosophy.

Motherlode - AAP recommendation

The article mentions Swedish car seats, so I thought I would post a little more information about them since I think they rock!

Here is a great video put out by an insurance company on the safety of Swedish carseats and rearfacing until 4-5 years old - notice how the older girls legs are not curled up, due to the difference in positioning of the carseat:




Many companies have developed car seats especially for Sweden -

I posted the one we have the Acta Graco, but there is also Britax and a few other models.



One of Sweden's aims is to eliminate all traffic deaths and have 0 traffic deaths for one year (and preferably more after that). You may think that sounds silly - but the idea as a goal has really been amazing to watch in practice. Last year only approx. 280 people lost their lives in traffic, all year, in the entire country.

In 2009 NO children with a rearfacing carseat died in Sweden (please remember that it is a recommendation not a law that children ride rearfacing until 4-5 so not all families do so).

There may be a lot of other reasons for the above statistics, but I don't think the carseats hurt.

4 comments:

  1. Yeah, I don't get why people (in the US) are so against safer guidelines for children riding in cars.

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  2. I wonder if you could import one of their larger seats..

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  3. You can import them, but I believe they are illegal to use in the us because they aren't approved here.

    Check out carseat.se

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  4. Thanks for the post! My brother lives in Sweden (he's Canadian) and his girlfriend is Swedish. This is how we found out that most kids ride until they are 5, and that they have a wonderfully low death rate. We're looking to import one for our son for the future.

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