But second, that doesn't matter. Most places do not have laws that prohibit children in the front seat of cars, only that they use appropriate child seats. Further, child seats are typically required for _children_, not just infants. IIRC, for example, in Texas, child seats are required for any child under the age of 8, unless they are taller than 4'9". It is totally reasonable for a 7 year old to want to go for a ride in their parents "fancy" car. It's actually very responsible of this person to get a child seat properly installed in order to support that.
The three point harness is a good compromise between the uselessness of a lap belt and the incovinience of a 5 point harness. But its certainly not as good as a 5. Point harness.
3-point belts are made to be as quick and fool proof as possible so that people actually use them, and use them correctly. Importantly, they auto-retract so that they are worn in the proper position.
When you put on 5-point belts, you have to 4 times as many latches to operate, and you have to adjust all 5 belts -- and in the proper order. If you tighten the belts in the wrong order, they won't protect you properly. It is not intuitive -- I have a car with 5-points and the passengers who manage to figure out how to latch them almost universally tighten the belts wrong.
Edit to answer my own question: apparently they use spotters that radio in to them whether or not it's clear, and (at least in NASCAR) the cars don't have side mirrors but have an extra long rear view mirror.
When I was a kid on the farm, all the transmissions in the grain trucks were modified so you could only go forward. Too many accidents driving backwards with bad sight lines. Its a strange thing at first but you get used to always parking with a forward exit.
Consider for instance the $34 million verdict in Texas against Dorel, which failed to warn against placing children under the age of two in forward-facing seats. The kid Cayden was properly restrained in the back seat, but the weight of his head alone was enough to result in spinal injuries that have left him partially paralyzed for life.
We used to laugh at my kid when kid tried to reach for things on the floor and then fell on their head due to the weight of the head relative to the rest of the body -- but that's why rear-facing and five-point is important for children under 2,3 years old.
Go look at crash tests of "child car seats" that are nothing more than a box ticking exercise which uses the adult seat, versus a properly engineering seat and you'll see what you are completely wrong.
https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/child_passenger_safet....
Actual accident data doesn't back you up...
https://www.ferrari.com/en-US/auto/gtc4lusso
But what difference does that make? Why couldn't you put a car seat in the front passenger seat of a two-seater?
But if you want to get real sad, IIRC many airbag systems are not designed with an occupant outside the parameters of a typical adult male in mind. Some modern systems are getting better about this, but if you're too short, too tall, a woman, or other-wise-outside-of-the-norm, good luck.
Equally when travelling as best I can tell all European cars have a method to do this and you can install in the front seat.
So this probably varies by country, but I am not sure which countries have what or where the USA is.
Without specifically checking I imagine that the Australian Design Rules basically wouldn't allow them to add the option even if they wanted to - if I had to guess because you're not allowed to have such a disable button (which you could argue could also be dangerous in some cases if pressed or used when it shouldn't be).
Also if you take it as exactly 5'9" then airbags aren't suitable for men either. What you need to do is examine the range it's designed for. It's not the average height that matters, it's what percent of men/women fall inside that range. There might be a significant difference in that percent, or there might not be.
According to FMVSS 208, they're tested using an unbelted 50th percentile size male dummy. That's the reason they deploy with more force and are triggered at lower impact speed had they been designed with belted occupants of varying sizes in mind.
If you unplug the cable at the bottom of a BMW seat (so it doesn't know the seat occupancy and belts) it will disable the airbag and show an airbag light.
> Buckle all children aged 12 and under in the back seat.
> - Airbags can kill young children riding in the front seat. Never place a rear-facing car seat in front of an airbag.
And, for some cars, the front seat is safer for everyone, including children, thanks to the focus on improving the safety ratings for front seat passengers (which are often advertised) [1]. For example, my car last car had side curtain airbags only in the front.
On average, especially with older cars, I assume the CDC is probably right. Their recommendations necessarily have to be the most useful for the average/masses.
1. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/study-shows-back-s...
We're changing the child seat to front facing right now - our baby is 10 months old. It can be done little bit earlier but not too much.
> In 2018, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released new recommendations for car seat safety. As part of these recommendations, they removed their previous age-based recommendation that children remain rear facing in car seats until the age of 2.
> The AAP now suggests that children remain rear facing until they reach their rear-facing car seat’s weight/height limits which, for most children, will leave them rear-facing beyond the previous age recommendation.
Source: https://www.healthline.com/health/childrens-health/forward-f...
Their 2011 rear facing recommendation is based on a retracted article and their 2016 rec is based on the same article's data except using a smaller dataset which they acknowledge is not statistically significant. The only other data cited looks at rear facing Swedish children compared to _unbelted_ Swedish children.
I went back and reread it to make sure I was remembering right. I'm dumbfounded that this was allowed not only to stand as a rec, but was increased (deepened? made stronger?) when they had even less data than they did before. I get that it feels like it should be safer, but that's not science and I would have expected a group making medical and safety recs to maintain a higher standard.
https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/142/5/e201824...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrari_Portofino#/media/File:...
