My 2001 9-3 is not fitted with a passanger front air bag but it does have a side airbag on both sides. I am aware that the baby seat should not be placed on the front seat if an airbag is active, but does that also include side airbags? If so, is the dealer able to deactivate the passanger side airbag?
A baby seat should not be placed in the front seat of any 4-seat car, airbag or not. If there is a rear seat, it should go there. The only exception is
2-seat vehicles, such as pickup trucks. These will have a disable function for the passenger bag.
of the "projectile" possibility, either the REAR pass or driver seat ONLY.
I agree, my child has always been on the rear seat. My situation is that I am moving to a house 2 km away from my present dewling and the road between these two houses has a speed limit of 30kmh. I would like to drop the rear seats down to carry some stuff to the new place over the next month. I may not be able to always get someone to watch my child during these random times. Thefore, I will make an exception and put the baby seat on the front seat if the side-impact airbag will not potentionaly harm my child or if it can be disarmed for the duration of my move.
From google I can only find "warnings" about passanger-side front airbags not side impact airbags. Many newer cars have side-impact airbags on the rear seats, should these be disarmed before carrying a child on the rear seat?
No, the last statement is simply not true. Look in the alt.autos.saab thread "9-5 Passenger Airbag - how to disable?" started 9 April 2003 where I tried to show that most research from real accidents shows that the front seat is the safest (of course provided that the passenger airbag is removed or disabled).
It is mainly the car industry that markets the idea that the rear seat is the safest to avoid being forced to invent safe methods to disable the passenger airbag and to give enough room for rear-facing child seats in the front.
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No No No!! A child shall be be placed in the front passenger seat with a special babyseat mounted. Airbag switched off. Here in Sweden we have used this for a long time and this have saved a lot of babies. I don´t know why you still drive with the small kids in the back. The child fly like a stone the whole way from the back and hits the windscreen if you hit something.
the "projectile" possibility, either the REAR pass or driver seat ONLY.
If the child seat is located in the rear seat the best location is actually in the centre, because there you have the best protection from side impacts. With modern child seats, at least the ones we've had in Sweden for the past 15 years, there is no "projectile" effect as they are so tightly coupled to the seat.
The Saab designers (as well as the Volvo designers) have really adopted the Swedish traffic safety research and made the 9-5 the safest car in the world in real traffic accidents. I hope that also some of the Swedish ideas about child seating and child safety in cars (we have the lowest car accident infant mortality in the world) would be adopted by the rest of the society, saving the lives of many children.
the "projectile" possibility, either the REAR pass or driver seat ONLY.
Nah. I always strapped my kids' car seats up on the roof rack. Much sturdier restraint, they're up there out of harm's way, and that way they also get a better view. But never, ever forget to put on their goggles. Not even once. The bugs can do some serious eye damage at highway speeds.
The main problem is that the age limit is considered to be different in different countries. In US the NHTSA recommends to keep the children rear faced at least up to 12 months of age. This is completely crazy!!!! All real accident statistics show that if the children are rear faced up to say 4 years the mortality drastically decreases.
I have seen a diagram in a newspaper comparing infant mortality age by age in Sweden and Germany (where they start placing the children front-facing at the age of about 1 year. For the first year the figures are comparable but between the age of 1 and 4 about twice as many German children are killed as in Sweden (all relative numbers of course).
I will try to post a link if I can find the diagram on the web.
Didn't we just do this a couple months or a year ago here? The technology varies, a lot, by country, as do the laws. Maybe someone could post a picture of a Swedish baby seat in the front seat so people know that it's a different kind of beast entirely?
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