Some rear-facing recline indicator lines are molded into the plastic on carseats and are really hard to see. In this video, I show you some tricks of the trade that we use to make those lines easier to see.
Just subscribed and shared your link with my daughter. I'm a new grandad so lots of helpful stuff here when my daughter allows me to take him out! Legal Dad is a good man. All the best to both of you. From Scotland. 🏴🇺🇸
Hi! I haven't had a chance to try one in it yet, so I can't comment on it. I have seen other techs say that they have personally used the Chicco KidFit pretty easily. Maybe even a Nuna AACE will work.
Recline is important. With children's weak necks, is a greater recline better? In case of an accident the head would compress the spine down instead of going forward where the spine may not be able to take the strain of the forward movement in an accident? Rear facing seats are VERY reclined, but then when a child is too big to fit facing backwards they often move to seats with adjustable reclines? In my minivan I reclined the rear vehicle seat to accommodate the maximum recline of the child safety seat (thinking of how astronauts sit). Is there any data on this?
There's no specific data of which I'm aware because they don't really release it (if it's done at all). There are on-going studies, but until they're presented at conferences, we don't know what the topics are. What we do know is that engineers design and test their carseats at angles set forth by Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 213. In it, rear-facing carseats are allowed to rotate down up to 70° in a frontal crash (statistically the most common type of crash). If an engineer can accomplish a lay-flat recline and still keep their carseat from not rotating past 70° in a crash, great. No one has accomplished that yet for a variety of reasons. First, everything moves toward the point of impact, head, shoulders, legs, feet. So even if a rear-facing seat were in a lay-flat recline, there would be so much force put on the neck, back, and shoulders from the force of the head pulling on them that injury could occur. Second, we have to use the reclines that the manufacturers specify because that's how the carseats have been engineered and crash tested. If they're used outside of those reclines (including vehicle seats-those reclines are also specified in the child safety section of the vehicle manual), there's no guarantee of safety performance. Think of it this way: recline is used to keep the airway open. Once a child has the neck strength to do that on their own, it's less about recline and more about crash force management. If your carseat allows changing the recline to more upright when rear-facing (some don't), it's better to be more upright when RF because in a frontal crash (and even side impact, because the back of a carseat will swing around), the back of the carseat will protect the head, neck, and spine of a child. When they're more reclined, like I said earlier, their necks stretch because of their heavy heads. But always follow manufacturer instructions!
