ERF experience on hol

[kate.m.]

Hiya!
Ive recently got back from Devon, which is a 4 hour drive from us & midway through the week, i had a bit of a dilemma. My friend (who used to work in a nursery & went to car seat training when she worked there) noted that our seat wasnt in very securely. Its not a specialised ERF seat per se, its designed to be switched to FF at 20kg (i think, cant remember exactly without goin outside & looking at it). She said that she knows how i feel about erf, but in her opinion this seat would be safer ff. So she fitted it forward facing for me, just to see what i thought. And i was very surprised at how strong a reaction i had to it. It really upset me to think that i would be driving back for 4 hours on the motor way with him FF. It almost brought me to tears . Anyhow, i switched it back around to rear facing & using some of her knowledge installed it much better than i had the 1st time.

On a positive note, when we were on our 4 hour drive back, we got stuck in traffic (theres a surprise!) I was talking to OH, when i heard Travis say "Hiya!" turned around to look at him & he was waving through the back window, to the lorry driver queued up behind us, who was waving back! So cute!!!

Its all made me very determined to save up for a proper erf seat, with the support leg bit.

 

[mommy43]

i know how u feel hun i got a lift one day with a friend n put lo in her childs car seat ff it was a 5 min journey but i hated it so did lo she cried all the way home it wasnt till after i realised shes never been ff n is normally very happy in the car it probably felt very strange to her
my older kids were all ff when they grew out their baby seats but i didnt know about erf then
volvo do erf seat its meant to be one of the cheapest maybe someone else can help with that
i have a britax 2 way elite from saftey centre in milton keynes it was £197 also one of the cheaper options but i love it its solid once fitted n i find it easy to fit too

 

[hattiehippo]

I know just how you feel - I turned Tom FF in our Concord Ultimax combination seat cos he kept trying to sit more upright when RF. After 2 days I turned him back and told DH we were buying an ERF seat.

I was so uncomfortable driving with him FF and more importantly I couldn't get the seat to install properly FF anyway - there was far too much movement in it.
We got the Britax 2 way seat put in at the incarsafety centre at Milton Keynes last weekend and it is fantastic! It is so solid in the car and Tom is really happy to go in it.

 

[Rachel_C]

I'm not sure whether it applies for seats bigger than infant seats (like normal baby seats and slightly bigger ones like the Britax First Class Plus and the Maxi Cosi Opal) but when I took our car up to our local ERF fitting place, the very informative guy there told me that they fit and secure very differently from ones like our BeSafe ERF seat, which is isofix and has a support leg. He showed us the Opal fitted correctly and how it does wobble from side to side if you try to move it with your hands, but that it's the kind of impact you'd get in a car crash that matters. I later found a video online showing that you can wobble the car seats from side to side and that's fine, but if you hit the back of the seat either forwards or backwards, that's the true test.

 

[kate.m.]

Ours is super solid now... & it was a fab trick that my friend showed me, & i tried it ERF too:
when fitting the carseat in the rear passenger seat: lift up the headrest for the front passenger seat, install car seat, push front seat back, then push front seat's headrest down so that the top of the car seat is sort-of wedged underneath it!!
I obviously can't vouch for this as an official method, you should probs check with official types before doing this urself, but its made our seat a million times more secure!

 

[Eala]

That definitely wouldn't work for all seats Some specifically require space between the back of the passenger seat and the back of the carseat - it'll tell you that in the manual though.

Glad you got it fitting for you