Quote:
Originally Posted by unclebilly
How did the incorrect seat result in his death?
I ask this because we are looking at moving my 4 year old into a booster and my 14 month old into a forward facing right now.
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In general, the car's seat belt needs to rest over top of the pelvic bones and the collarbone, rather than the stomach and the neck, when using a booster seat. If you put the child in the booster seat, do up the belt and find it's on their stomach or neck, they're too small and should still be in a full car seat. Because of its shape and size and how I installed the 3-point in the 911, our eldest was out of a booster seat in that car before she was out of it in the odyssey, because the belt sat too low on her in the booster seat. But that's unusual.
I'll put out another vote for getting kids restrained properly. Go to a clinic if you're not sure. A cop once told me she used her night stick to really get tension on the straps - I used a hammer shift, which worked great. I was really pissed at my FIL once when he came to pick up our kids and the car seats were barely strapped in, with no tension at all. I checked every single time after that. I got the old "oh when we were kids we didn't have these seats and we were fine" bs line. Look at the numbers - child fatality rates are a fraction of what they were 30 years ago, mostly due to advances in car seat safety.