Many modern cars have the ability to disable the front passenger airbag, for when you do need/want to put the seat in the front.

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...

Not all child seats are rear-facing child seats.

No but for tiny little newborns, all are. Something about not having proper muscle structure around spine to handle thrust forward during frontal (most common) crash. Also reason why you should never shake babies or expose them to any form of higher G.

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.

You should actually hold off for longer

> 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...

My wife and I got into an argument about this when it was time to switch our kids car seat so I pulled up their recommendations and read their sources. Their cited evidence doesn't support their recommendation at all (nor did it when they first made the rec in 2011).

Their 2011 rear facing recommendation is based on a retracted article and their 2016 rec is based on the same article's data except using a smaller dataset which they acknowledge is not statistically significant.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...

I didn't say they were all rear-facing. lisper asked "Why couldn't you put a car seat in the front passenger seat of a two-seater?" I don't know anything about safety of front-facing or booster seats for kids in front seats. But I think my response was a reasonable answer/example of when you wouldn't want to put a car seat in the front passenger seat.