Why are child car seats so difficult to get into?
It's not simply the leaning over and hoping that you don't nail your child's head on the door frame of the car- it's trying to find the seat belt parts once you've set your dear one down into the seat. The way that the 5 point system is put together, your kid ends up sitting on the parts while you awkwardly reach past their flailing limbs to get the straps out, only to then find out that all your maneuvering has had a deleterious effect on their sitting posture in the seat so that they now look even more like a plush animal jammed into the corner.
So, what needs to happen?
Well, I think that the changes need to happen both on the side of car manufacturers and on the car seat manufacturers.
Car seat makers: honestly! give us some retracting seatbelts or something! I could find no documentation anywhere as to why flywheels could not be part of the car seat design. I mean, they work on adults- why not for children?
Now, this only gets us part way.
Car makers: it's great that you provide the LATCH system in your back seats to strap the seat in, but why do you make it so that the car seat itself can't flip out of the way, leaving more room for us to put the kid in the car? I mean, honestly! Does the car seat need to be strapped on top of another seat? Wouldn't it make more sense if it weren't strapped on top of a soft, pillowy surface? Why isn't moving the seat cushion out of the way part of the LATCH system?
You'd think that with car makers trying every new novelty on their designs (now they have an on-board vacuum...), why not make a truly helpful improvement?
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