Child Seat and passenger airbag

R

Rob_benton

Member
 Bedfordshire
Hi

I'm looking at E85's that you can not deactivate the passenger airbag.
My son is 4 yrs old in a front facing child seat and soon to be using a booster seat.

I've looked up previous posts and they seem mixed opinions.

Would it be ok to use a front facing child seat or booster seat with the air bag activated ?

I've looked up the owners manual and it talks mostly about cars with the deactivation switch.

Can anyone help ?

Cheers
 
I do, as I did in my MR2 - although I don't use booster, I use a child seat that some forum members have variously descibed as an ejector seat/padded cell with extra side impact protection etc. The advice is to move the seat as far back as it will go, and you should be good to go. My husband too, did exactly this in his ex focus as he was unable to deactivate the switch in that.

At the end of the day, it's your call though.
 
A standard child seat for his age/weight group - he is the size of a 5-6 year old. I decided not to go down booster route, as the safety experts advice against it in any car, as it doesn't give any sort of extra protection whereas a good carseat does.
 
I do also, I looked into this extensively and even BMW suggest (in some countries) that the benefits of having an airbag outweighed the risk that the airbag may cause injury ... it really depends what kind of crash you have...but ultimately I do what s NDB does and just have the seat as far back as possible.

even the AA now state:

"For forward facing child restraints, it is acceptable to leave the airbag active and move the car's seat back on its runners as far as it will go. "
 
+1 on the airbag activated with a front facing seat or booster seat. I think the only issue with airbags and baby seats is when the seat is rearward facing with an active bag.
At the end of the day with the seat as far back as it can go, a child has virtually zero chance of reaching the dash in a crash unlike an adult.
 
I don't know how much this helps as it's the US version of the manual, but airbags are the same so there may be some applicability. Curiously, the manual contradicts itself. In one place it says to deactivate when any child is in the passenger seat regardless of the carrier style. Easy to say as all US cars have a deactivation switch.

But then it goes on to say what to do with a forward facing seat if the airbag is active, move the seat as far back and as far down as it will go. It sounds like what the real issue is is the liklihood of the child being out of position when the airbag deploys. If that should happen, the airbag could be more dangerous than the accident impact. If there is no chance of being out of position with the seat back and down, it should be OK left activated.
 
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