My understanding is that the concern is that the passenger airbag can do serious damage to a child sitting in the front. You seem to be suggesting this is no longer the case. What has changed that now makes this safe?.

Airbags are triggered electronically, not mechanically right? Then it should be possible to disable the passenger airbag only when a child car seat is attached.

They already do that. There are weight and position sensors in the passenger seat that will disable the airbag if it detects an object under certain weight and height parameters. The airbag won’t go off if the seat is empty either. If you want a simple example, put a 40lb box of paper or books in the passenger seat and buckle the seat belt. You’ll see that the light on the dash will indicate the passenger airbag is off. I could describe how the system works in more detail, but if your genuinely interested, Im sure there are some good resources on the internet that explain it better than I would.

Most cars do this based on weight.

Aren't you meant to install child seats facing backwards, if you install them in the front passenger seat? Thus the mass of the seat itself shields the child from the airbag.

backwards-facing car seats for small children are way worse if an airbag triggers, because the airbag basically directly hits it and fires the seat backwards. They should only ever be used if the airbag is deactivated.

Good to know, I was just recalling the instruction pictograms on the passenger sun shade.

What do the new cars offer exactly? I always understood it as to shield a child from the power of the airbags that are present in the front seat. Is there some mechanism that's changed for that seating with respect to air bag deployment?

Some vehicles have a specific method of disabling the passenger seat air bag. Outside of the desire to place a baby seat there, some passengers may have a medical condition such that their risk of death is higher if the airbag deploys than if it doesn't.

In most jurisdictions, it is still illegal to put a baby or very small child in the passenger seat. I can't speak for anyone else, but in my own case, I think the risk of forgetting to turn it off when a child is riding in the front seat is going to be much higher than the risk of forgetting my child in the rear seat.

That's really the calculus: How is it that we think we could forget that our child is in the back seat, but remember to disengage the air bag every time we put their seat in the front?

I assume it's because modern cars have weight sensors for the airbags, but they don't always work.

There is a weight sensor built into the front passenger seat.

Require? I thought in most US states it was a recommendation, not a regulation.

Admittedly, CA is one of the states where it is a regulation, and there are a decent number of people on HN from CA.

A child in the middle of the backseat is the maximum distance from every exterior surface of the car. It is the safest place in the car.

Putting kids in the front seat only works for one kid, only if there’s one adult, and only if the front airbag can be disabled.

In the US, the average age of a car on the road is 12 years and and 25% are older than 16 years. Maybe in a decade we can change the regulation but it seems to still have merit now

Isofix isn’t some sort of trendsetter, but only last few years I’ve noticed they are fitted in front passenger seat.