Over the summer I heard someone saying that studies have shown that 95% of rear-seat passengers are children, a statistic which makes sense to me.
Why then, do car manufacturers insist on putting adult-sized seatbelts in the rear seats when surely child-sized harnesses would be more practical? Not only that, they’d totally negate the need for a child’s car seat (although infants would still need one).
Any theories?
I’ve been wondering this myself!
Good question.
For one, it might be harder to strap in those infant car seats if you’re limited to strapping them in with smaller child-sized seat belts.
The other reason I can think of is, what if one or more adults need to sit back there? Would you have to have double the amount of seat belts available, or would the adults just have to go without using seat belts?
Car seats have been widely available since the early 90’s.
If a parent does not make use of the proper, and available, accident restraint devices, why should the gov’t bear the responsibility being abrogated by the parent?
Trips aren’t always planned. Find that you need to grab a cab, and what are the chances that you’ll have your child’s booster seat?
It’s an imposition to have a child in an adult-sized seat belt but you simply couldn’t fit an adult into a child-sized one. Changing the backseat would limit who you could drive with. You would turn a 5 seat car into a 2 Adult plus 3 child car and be unable to safely fit adults in the back. I guess the demand isn’t there for that feature or else the car companies would charge you extra for it.
Also, can teens even fit in the child sized ones? It would be nice as long as your kids are small but what happens when they outgrow the seat belt size? Do you have to take the car in to have larger seat belts installed?
[quote=“Maoman”]
Any theories?[/quote]
What is a child? If you concider a teenager a child then a child could be a person between 1m-1,90m and from 20kg-110kg.
Also the size of a child between 1year and 12year varies.
I would think you would need to go to the car dealer every two years to replace your seatbelts because the child outgrew it.
If I had to guess it’s partly because a car w/o adult sized seatbelts would be tougher to sell. And partly because no manufacturer wants to be liable for deaths/injuries that occur to children wearing manufacturer designed/installed seatbelts. the fact is that we live in (especially in the US) a lawsuit happy society. take airbags for example. A huge safety improvement yet I remember there being numerous lawsuits involving them.
It would remove the childless person’s polite excuse for NEVER, EVER carrying (other peoples) children as passengers.
Have you ever thought that it might be uncomfortable for someone to have the life of others kids in there hands?
I often drive with my 3yo niece in the car (in a child seat) and it crossed my mind a few times that if I where to have a accident my fault or not where she was badly injured or killed would I ever be able to see the parents in the eyes EVER again?
Bitter about something?
There certainly isn’t a business case for an auto manufacturer to go thru all of the expensive design and testing of a new product that wouldn’t necessarily improve sales since a child seat would still be considerably safer for very young children. and most of the population doesn’t have children that are too small to use the current seatbelts. And they would still get sued endlessly even after all of their testing.
There’s no way of offering sufficient child sized seating in the rear without inhibiting seat function for the majority of users.
Children need, to list a few:
None of the above can be practically fitted to a mass selling car as standard as it isn’t practical or possible with today’s seating technology.
The reason that there are a multitude of different child safety seats at most specific retailers is that children tend to come in different shapes and sizes.
As far as motor vehicle manufacturer’s are also concerned, many of their vehicles are designed for use in many locations and countries around the world. Many of these countries or applications do not require children or indeed adults to be belted in the rear.
Three point harnesses which are presently fitted as standard to a majority of passenger cars are both cheap and practical. Although it may one day be possible to design a seat type which can incorporate technology required for the safe seating of children, it would certainly not be inexpensive, and would certainly not be required by all.
Three point seat belts and ISOfix technology presently caters for almost all needs regarding children and adults. The anchoring points and seatbelts are available for those who require the optional fitment of specific child seats which are accurately matched to the user. This reduces overall costs of supplying a vehicle as well as the purchase cost of a vehicle. This also reduces waste associated with safety equipment which is not necessarily required.
Another huge advantage to having personally chosen child seating is that the seats can be removed and refitted to a large number of different vehicles.
Overall it makes little practical sense to fit child seat technology to vehicles as standard at this time.
It may in future be possible however to incorporate a greater number of seat belt anchoring points to a car. such as four, five and six point harnesses. Such fitments might offer greater protection for occupants of a car as well as allow an extra option for child passengers, who may then only require cushioning to be fitted as a non standard option.
These multi point harnesses are however very clumsy in application and require much more time to get in and out of. They also require much greater adjustment and again this all makes them rather inconvenient. Inconvenience as some of us may know already, often causes drivers to go without.
I personally accept few excuses for not offering suitable protective seating to children and adults in a car. I find however that education has a much greater effect on occupant safety than the standard fitments of features such as seatbelts. There is presently a law which requires rear passengers to belt-up in cars when travelling on the freeway in Taiwan. Even though the vast majority of passenger vehicles do offer these seatbelts, few ever use them however. I don’t believe it would be much different if offering standard child seating either.
Some people even ride motorcycles with babies on them, when there are safer buses, cars and even taxis and trains available. 
Have you ever thought that it might be uncomfortable for someone to have the life of others kids in there hands?
I often drive with my 3yo niece in the car (in a child seat) and it crossed my mind a few times that if I where to have a accident my fault or not where she was badly injured or killed would I ever be able to see the parents in the eyes EVER again?[/quote]
Often, plus children are sometimes (not always, of course) an absolute pain, which is a hazard in itself, since an irritable, pissed off driver is more likely to make mistakes.
On one occaision in the past I felt I had to refuse to continue unless the parent could get thier child to (a) stop screaming and (b) stop waving a bloody ballon in my rear line of sight.
Took a while, since the screaming redoubled on confiscation of the balloon, during which I went away, read a newspaper and had a cup of service station coffee.
Bitter about something?
[/quote]
Of course. I’m a grumpy old man. I’m bitter about EVERYTHING.