Not nice replying to your own posts but here is a link to the diagram:
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Swedish sorry, but look at page 8 where the risk of death or injury between Sweden and Germany is compared The German situation is even worse than I remembered. When you start placing children front facing at the age of 1, like is common in Germany, the death/injury risk is increased by a factor of 4-5 compared with rear-face seating. In Sweden there is an increase in injury rate at the age of 4 when most parents start turning their children front-facing (NHTSA should see these figures and hopefully change their recommendation for preschoolers/toddlers, saving the lifes of quite some amount of US children!).
Note also that today it is even more important that the child is rear-seated with _no_ seat belt slack (= stuck tight to the dashboard) as modern cars are stiffer, maintain the passenger volume more intact and thus generate higher collision retardation forces than cars from the
80-ies (page 9 of the report)