kids in front seat of early 911

[billwagnon]

My wife says all the statistics say kids are safest in the back seat of a car.

I countered with - those statistics are for cars with the engine in the front (and, thinking fast) besides, the front has shoulder belts the back is just lap belts.

What do the statistics say about kids in the front seat of an early 911? (besides that I should really take the minivan)

[North Coast Cab]

I believe the "kids in the back seat" argument is based on potential injury from a passenger side airbag. However, in a 911 you can put a fullsize car seat in the front seat which you can't put in the back. I think it all depends in the size of the child as to which is best. I have a very small child jumper seat which I use in the back for my 5 year old. My concern is without an engine up front there's not a lot to contain the impact should there be one. If you can't get them in a proper seat, don't put them in the car.

JG

[billwagnon]

Oh these kids (pertinent detail) are 9 and 7. 'Big' kids.

[Emission]

My 4-year-old sits in a booster seat in the front seat of my '86 930.

When he is old enough (7-8?), he will be there without a booster.

I rationalize that it is easier to get him out in an emergency (fire?) from the front seat, and much easier for would-be rescuers to get at him too if I am knocked-out or trapped!

There is no airbag, and the seat holds him firmly. Easy decision for me.

[Emission]

Oh, according to statistics, it is probably very dangerous to even get out of bed... think of all the things that can happen to you!

[A Quiet Boom]

Originally posted by Emission
Oh, according to statistics, it is probably very dangerous to even get out of bed... think of all the things that can happen to you!

Yeah but it's equally dangerous to stay in bed LOL

Now let's think about 911's and safety for a minute. First they were designed for high-speed travel on the autobahn as well as various types of racing, as such it only makes sense that the drivers and passengers seats in the car would be the safest place to be in an accident. When you also consider the fact that the driver and passenger seats are right about the middle of the car you have more even protection from side, front and rear impact. My daughter (4) rides in a car seat in front and I feel safer with her there than I do with her in the front seat of my fullsize pickup which lacks two very important "safety" features of the 911, excellent brakes and the ability to swerve to avoid collision without losing control. Let's face it the safest place to be during an accident is somewhere else so it only makes sense that a vehicle and driver which can avoid accidents will be safer due to reduce chance of collision. Once I was on the way to my in-laws to pick up my daughter and some drunken idiot decided that he should drive the wrong way in MY lane, I was easily able to avoid him by driving onto the burm around this oncoming threat but the people in the minivan behind me weren't so lucky and got seriously injured. The drunk didn't go left of center all of the sudden either he was driving straight toward me in my lane like he belonged there!

Make sure your kids are safely buckled in and be ever vigilant of those around you, hopefully you'll avoid an accident.

[jyl]

All other things (like belts and airbags) being equal the rear seats are usually safer than the fronts. In a front impact, there is more crush zone between the impact and the person. I can't quote any statistics but in my former life I defended a lot of cases involving catastrophic automobile accidents and I recall seeing those stats and they were consistent with what I saw in my cases.

Of course, not all things are always equal. Sometimes the front passenger gets a three-point belt and the rear only a two-point, other times the front passenger gets an airbag and the rear doesn't. Whether a better restraint system trumps being in the front seat, I'm not sure. Intuitively, it seems like it might depend on whether the accident was severe enough to crush the passenger cabin. if yes, then being well-restrained wouldn't help so much.

There's another issue, which is that a two-point belt can seriously injure children. The belt can ride up on their abdomen, and in a severe front impact they fold forward around the belt. This sometimes causes injury to the lower spinal cord. Perhaps this could be less likely with a larger child in a 911 rear seat where the front seatback might stop the child's torso from folding all the way forward, but that's just speculation.

And I suppose some car designs could have quirks like they might tend to accordion in the rear of the passenger compartment, or their engines might tend to penetrate the cabin, and so on. I have no idea if the 911 has such quirks.

Anyway, absent further research into the crashworthiness of the 911, I'd prefer the rear seat with three-point restraints, next the front seat with three-point restraints, next the rear seat with two-point restraints, last the front seat with two-point restraints.

The above is mostly thinking about a frontal collision. For a side impact, I can't think of any reason to prefer the front or rear seats. For a rollover, you might want to check how much headroom they have in the rear and in the front. In a rollover, the occupant moves around a lot and usually bashes his/her head into the roof, side windows, etc. Having more clearance between head and roof is probably a good thing. For a rear impact, the front seats would seem better but I think a severe rear impact is less common than a equally severe front impact.

As for the idea of the kids being trapped in the rear seat of a crashed and burning car, I personally would think of that as such a low probability event that I wouldn't let it make the decision. Yes, vehicle fires happen -- I had such cases, you may remember the Pinto -- but they're really uncommon.

Finishing with a personal thought: when I drive my kids around (6 y/o in rear with three-point belt, 3 y/o in rear with child seat secured by three-point belt) I tend to worry more about side impacts. My reasoning seems to be that since I drive very carefully with the kids and the Porsche has such good brakes and swerving ability, I don't feel it is as likely that I'll get into a frontal collision. But cars can pop out of side streets and run red lights anywhere. My thinking may be completely wrong here. It might be interesting to visit a Porsche wrecker and ask where most of the totaled cars were hit.

[nostatic]

On short trips my 5 (almost 6) year old rides in the front seat w/3 point belt. On longer trips (ie freeway speeds) I feel safer with him in the back seat, even though it only has a two point belt. My reasoning is that even though the front has 3 point belts, the fit is so-so (and kids tend to squirm around), so there ends up being a lot of room to move. In back, the front seat limits forward travel, and the fit is better (ie the contours are smaller). Perhaps 3 points in the back would be best, but it is tough to get the shoulder portion to run across the body correctly...I worry because often it seems like the belt is up around their necks. That is, when they aren't trying to climb around to see something behind, or pick up something they dropped, or...

[jyl]

So I went to www.umtri.umich.edu/tdc/doc/cds2000.pdf and browsed it a little.

This is a statistical report of serious (injury or tow) accidents during 2000. Here's some trivia I picked up.

- July and December had the most accidents (9.1% and 8.9% of total accidents, respectively).
- Saturday had the most accidents (16.9% of total), followed by Sunday and Friday (15.2% and 15.0%). Monday and Tuesday were the safest days (12.7% and 12.6%).
- 9% of accidents were fatal. 52% resulted in no treatment or "transported and released" which I'm guessing means paramedics came and treated, but the person was not hospitalized.
- alcohol was known to be involved in 18.3% of accidents. In 16.6%, alcohol involvement was neither known nor ruled out.
- drugs were involved in 5.7%, and 28.1% were "not coded" which I think means "unknown".
- 13.8% of accidents were rear-end, 4.5% were head-on, 37.7% were angle impacts, 5.6% were some sort of sideswipe, and 37.3% were "not collision with vehicle in transport" which I am guessing means hitting a tree, parked vehicle, going off the road, and so on.
- A breakdown of what was hit indicates that 57.9% of the time it was "Vehicle Number 2", 3.8% was "Vehicle Number 1" (does that mean the car hit itself?), 5.4% involved roll-overs, 5.6% involved hitting trees or shrubbery, 7.0% involved hitting poles, 6.1% involved hitting barriers. I was surprised that pedestrians were hit only 0.1% of the time, while animals were hit 0.5% of the time.
- Pct of accidents involving vehicle fire: 0.5%
- Just 0.1% of accidents involved Porsches.
- 54.3% of accidents began when the car was going straight forward, 12.6% when it was turning left (this sounds like the intersection T-bone), 1.3% when it was turning right, and 14.9% when it was "negotiating a curve".
- The "initial critical precrash event" (boy, I love this terminology - I think they mean when did things start to go wrong) in 10.6% of accidents was turning left at intersection, 9.9% traveling through the intersection, 18.1% was going outside of the lane or off the road, 11.3% was an oncoming car crossing over the centerline, 9.2% was another vehicle in the same direction at higher speed, 5.1% was another vehicle stopped, 5.6% was poor road conditions or traveling too fast for conditions. There's plenty more but those were the major critical precrash events.
- 62.7% of accident vehicles had airbags.
- in 23.5% of the accidents, one or more airbags deployed.
- there's a whole bunch of statistics about the extent of vehicle deformation, but I can't decipher the codes.
- there's also a whole bunch of statistics about exactly what intruded into the passenger compartment had the extent (centimeters) of intrusion, but I ran out of patience while reading it. Basically, seems like the toe pan, door, and roof were most likely to intrude. 35.5% of accidents had no intrusion, about 30% had intrusion of more than 3 cm, and the rest were unrecorded.
- 7.5% of occupants were entrapped, 85.4% were "exit not inhibited", the rest were "unknown".
- 94.8% of occupants were not ejected, 2.3% went out the side windows, 1.5% were ejected out the windshield, rear glass, door, or convertible roof.
- there's all sorts of interesting stuff about the severity and source of injury.

Anyway, guess I bored everyone off this thread (my wife has been making biting comments about wasting my time reading this stuff) but there you go.

[RickC]

There are ways of modifying the back seat to accomodate 3-point belts. I put them in my Targa and ride with my 7 year old in the back and my 1 year old in a car seat up front, simply because the car seat won't fit in the back.
When I just ride with my 7 year old, she rides up front. Without airbags, and with the front seat of the car being in the center of the car (much as the back seat of our Volvo station wagon is in the center), I think she is equally safe overall, though of course there is no way to know where you will be hit.